THE LONE VOICE: In One Vote, a Call for Restraint
by Philip Shenon, The New York Times
September 16, 2001
WASHINGTON, Sept. 15 - Even though she is described as the most committed pacifist in Congress, Representative Barbara Lee of California said that the day may come soon when she will support a war against the terrorists who struck New York and Washington and any nation that supported them.
But not yet, Ms. Lee said today, explaining why hers was the sole vote in either the House or Senate opposing a resolution authorizing military action against the terrorists who sent hijacked jets into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
The House vote was 420 to 1.
"I agonized over that vote," said Ms. Lee, 55, a Democrat from a liberal, even leftist district that includes Oakland and Berkeley. "We've got to bring these perpetrators to justice. But I'm saying that I have not yet seen the evidence. And until then, in Congress, we must show restraint."
She said she decided only a few hours before the vote on Friday, when she attended a prayer service at the National Cathedral in Washington for the victims and listened closely to one of the prayers.
"One of the clergy members said that as we act, we should not become the evil that we deplore," she said. "And at that moment, I knew what I had to do."
Her commitment to nonviolence has often left her a lonely voice and vote on the House floor. In 1998, hers was one of only five votes against renewed bombing against Iraq over its refusal to allow weapons inspections by the United Nations. In 1999, hers was the only vote against a resolution authorizing the Clinton administration's plans to bomb Yugoslavia over the conflict in Kosovo.
Ms. Lee said she resisted any simple labels of her voting record, including that of pacifist. "I don't subscribe to any kinds of labels," she said.
Ms. Lee, who received a degree in social welfare from the University of California in 1975, started in politics as an aide to Representative Ron Dellums, whose seat she now holds.
Copyright 2001 The New York Times Company
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A World Out of Touch With Itself: Where the Violence Comes From
by Rabbi Michael Lerner, Editor, TIKKUN Magazine
There is never any justification for acts of terror against innocent civilians -- not in Israel and not in the US -- it is the quintessential act of dehumanization and not recognizing the sanctity of others, and a visible symbol of a world increasingly irrational and out of control.
It's understandable why many of us, after grieving and consoling the mourners, feel anger. Unfortunately, demagogues in the White House and Congress have manipulated our legitimate outrage and channeled it into a new militarism and a revival of the deepest held belief of the conservative world-view: that the world is mostly a dangerous place and our lives must be based around protecting ourselves from the threatening others. In this case, terrorism provides a perfect base for this worldview -- it can come from anywhere, we don't really know who is the enemy, and so everyone can be suspect and everyone can be a target of our fear-induced rage. With this as a foundation, the Bush team has been able to turn this terrible and outrageous attack into a justification for massive military spending, a new war and the inevitable trappings: repression of civil liberties, denigration of "evil others," and a new climate of fear and intimidation against anyone who doesn't join this misuse of patriotism toward distorted ends.
Of course, the people who did this attack are evil and they are a real threat to the human race. If they could, they would use nuclear weapons or chemical/biological weapons. The perpetrators deserve to be punished, and I personally would be happy if all the people involved in this act were to be imprisoned for the rest of their lives. But that is quite different from talk about "eliminating countries" which we heard from Colin Powell in the days after the attack. Punishing the perpetrators is different from making war against whole populations.
The narrow focus on the perpetrators allows us to avoid dealing with the underlying issues. When violence becomes so prevalent throughout the planet, it's too easy to simply talk of "deranged minds." We need to ask ourselves, "What is it in the way that we are living, organizing our societies, and treating each other that makes violence seem plausible to so many people?" And why is it that our immediate response to violence is to use violence ourselves -- thus reenforcing the cycle of violence in the world?
We in the spiritual world will see the root problem here as a growing global incapacity to recognize the spirit of God in each other -- what we call the sanctity of each human being. But even if you reject religious language, you can see that the willingness of people to hurt each other to advance their own interests has become a global problem, and its only the dramatic level of this particular attack which distinguishes it from the violence and insensitivity to each other that is part of our daily lives.
We may tell ourselves that the current violence has "nothing to do" with the way that we've learned to close our ears when told that one out of every three people on this planet does not have enough food, and that one billion are literally starving. We may reassure ourselves that the hoarding of the world's resources by the richest society in world history, and our frantic attempts to accelerate globalization with its attendant inequalities of wealth, has nothing to do with the resentment that others feel toward us. We may tell ourselves that the suffering of refugees and the oppressed have nothing to do with us -- that that's a different story that is going on somewhere else. But we live in one world, increasingly interconnected with everyone, and the forces that lead people to feel outrage, anger and desperation eventually impact on our own daily lives.
The same inability to feel the pain of others is the pathology that shapes the minds of these terrorists. Raise children in circumstances where no one is there to take care of them, or where they must live by begging or selling their bodies in prostitution, put them in refugee camps and tell them that they have "no right of return" to their homes, treat them as though they are less valuable and deserving of respect because they are part of some despised national or ethnic group, surround them with a media that extols the rich and makes everyone who is not economically successful and physically trim and conventionally "beautiful" feel bad about themselves, offer them jobs whose sole goal is to enrich the "bottom line" of someone else, and teach them that "looking out for number one" is the only thing anyone "really" cares about and that anyone who believes in love and social justice are merely naive idealists who are destined to always remain powerless, and you will produce a world-wide population of people feeling depressed, angry, unable to care about others, and in various ways dysfunctional.
I see this in Israel, where Israelis have taken to dismissing the entire Palestinian people as "terrorists" but never ask themselves: "What have we done to make this seem to Palestinians to be a reasonable path of action today." Of course there were always some hateful people and some religious fundamentalists who want to act in hurtful ways against Israel, no matter what the circumstances. Yet, in the situation of 1993-96 when Israel under Yitzhak Rabin was pursuing a path of negotiations and peace, the fundamentalists had little following and there were few acts of violence. On the other hand, when Israel failed to withdraw from the West Bank, and instead expanded the number of its settlers, the fundamentalists and haters had a far easier time convincing many decent Palestinians that there might be no other alternative.
Similarly, if the U.S. turns its back on global agreements to preserve the environment, unilaterally cancels its treaties to not build a missile defense, accelerates the processes by which a global economy has made some people in the third world richer but many poorer, shows that it cares nothing for the fate of refugees who have been homeless for decades, and otherwise turns its back on ethical norms, it becomes far easier for the haters and the fundamentalists to recruit people who are willing to kill themselves in strikes against what they perceive to be an evil American empire represented by the Pentagon and the World Trade Center.
Most Americans will feel puzzled by any reference to this "larger picture." It seems baffling to imagine that somehow we are part of a world system which is slowly destroying the life support system of the planet, and quickly transferring the wealth of the world into our own pockets.
We don't feel personally responsible when an American corporation runs a sweat shop in the Philippines or crushes efforts of workers to organize in Singapore. We don't see ourselves implicated when the U.S. refuses to consider the plight of Palestinian refugees or uses the excuse of fighting drugs to support repression in Colombia or other parts of Central America. We don't even see the symbolism when terrorists attack America's military center and our trade center--we talk of them as buildings, though others see them as centers of the forces that are causing the world so much pain.
We have narrowed our own attention to "getting through" or "doing well" in our own personal lives, and who has time to focus on all the rest of this? Most of us are leading perfectly reasonable lives within the options that we have available to us -- so why should others be angry at us, much less strike out against us? And the truth is, our anger is also understandable: the striking out by others in acts of terror against us is just as irrational as the world system that it seeks to confront. Yet our acts of counter-terror will also be counter-productive. We should have learned from the current phase of the Israel-Palestinian struggle, responding to terror with more violence, rather than asking ourselves what we could do to change the conditions that generated it in the first place, will only ensure more violence against us in the future.
Luckily, most people don't act out in violent ways -- they tend to act out more against themselves, drowning themselves in alcohol or drugs or personal despair. Others turn toward fundamentalist religions or ultra-nationalist extremism. Still others find themselves acting out against people that they love, acting angry or hurtful toward children or relationship partners.
This is a world out of touch with itself, filled with people who have forgotten how to recognize and respond to the sacred in each other because we are so used to looking at others from the standpoint of what they can do for us, how we can use them toward our own ends. The alternatives are stark: either start caring about the fate of everyone on this planet or be prepared for a slippery slope toward violence that will eventually dominate our daily lives.
None of this should be read as somehow mitigating our anger at the
terrorists. Let's not be naïve about the perpetrators of this terror. The brains and money behind this operation isn't a group of refugees living penniless in Palestinian refugee camps. Many of the core terrorists are evil people, as are some of the fundamentalists and ultra-nationalists who demean and are willing to destroy others. But these evil people are often marginalized when societal dynamics are moving toward peace and hope (e.g. in Israel while Yitzhak Rabin was Prime Minister) and they become much more influential and able to recruit people to give their lives to their cause when ordinary and otherwise decent people despair of peace and justice (as when Israel from 1996 to 2000 dramatically increased the number of settlers).
So here is what would marginalize those who hate the United States. Imagine if the Bin Ladins and other haters of the world had to recruit people against America at a time when:
1. America was using its economic resources to end world hunger and redistribute the wealth of the planet so that everyone had enough.
2. America was the leading voice championing an ethos of generosity and caring for others-leading the world in ecological responsibility, social justice, open-hearted treatment of minorities, and rewarding people and corporations for social responsibility.
3. America was restructuring its own internal life so that all social practices and institutions were being judged "productive or efficient or rational" not only because they maximized profit, but also to the extent that they maximized love and caring, ethical/spiritual/ecological sensitivity, and an approach to the universe based on awe and wonder at the grandeur of creation (what I call an Emancipatory Spirituality).
We are trying to develop this kind of "New Bottom Line" in Tikkun. To build support for this approach we are now starting what we call "The TIKKUN COMMUNITY" -- both as a vehicle to raise money for the magazine, and as a way of taking some steps to acknowledge the reality that we have been functioning not only as a magazine, but as a kind of movement. The TIKKUN COMMUNITY will be a cadre of people who agree with certain basic principles. The founding statement can be found in this very issue of TIKKUN magazine (Nov-Dec, 2001) and on our website. We hope you'll join us. If you want to, contact me at RabbiLerner@tikkun.org.
Think it's naive and impossible to move American in that direction? Well, here are two reasons why, even if it's a long shot, it's an approach that deserves your support:
a. It's even more naïve to imagine that bombings, missile defense systems, more spies or baggage searches can stop people willing to lose their lives to wreak havoc and capable of airplane hijacking, chemical assaults (like anthrax), etc.
b. The response of people to the World Trade Building collapse was an outpouring of loving energy and generosity, sometimes even risking their own lives, and showing the capacity and desire we all have to care about each other. If we could legitimate people allowing that part of themselves to come out, without having to wait for a disaster, we could empower a part of every human being which our social order marginalizes. Americans have a deep goodness-and that needs to be affirmed.
Indeed, the goodness that poured forth from so many Americans should not be allowed to be overshadowed by the subsequent shift toward militarism and anger. That same caring energy could have been given a more positive outlet--if we didn't live in a society which normally teaches us that our "natural" instinct is toward aggression and that the best we can hope for is a world which gives us protection.
The central struggle going on in the world today is this one: between hope and fear, love or paranoia, generosity or trying to shore up one's own portion. In my book Spirit Matters I show why there is no possibility in sustaining a world built on fear. Our only hope is to revert to a consciousness of generosity and love. That's not to go to a lalla-land where there are no forces like those who destroyed the Word Trade Center. But it is to refuse to allow that to become the shaping paradigm of the 21st century. Much better to make the shaping paradigm the story of the police and firemen who risked (and in many cases lost) their lives in order to save other human beings who they didn't even know. Let the paradigm be the generosity and kindness of people when they are given a social sanction to be caring instead of self-protective. We cannot let war, hatred and fear become the power in this new century that it was in the last century.
And it's up to us. We can't expect the Left to be able to organize a successful movement, because they will define it in the most narrow terms. They will talk about the rights of the oppressed and make everyone believe that they don't really care about the terrible loss of life and the terrible fear that everyone now how to endure about our own safety. Their justified anger at the way capitalist globalization has hurt people around the world will make them play down the outrageousness of this particular attack -- and hence be disconnected to the righteous indignation that most the rest of us feel. Rather, we need a movement that puts forward a positive vision of a world based on caring -- and a commitment to rectify the injustices that the globalization of selfishness has wreaked on the world -- while simultaneously making it clear that we have no tolerance for reckless acts of violence and terror such as those which Israel has had to experience this past year or those which the U.S. faced in September. It's only with that balanced view that we can say that it is a huge mistake to make war or violence the primary way we respond to this situation. It's about time we began to say unequivocally that violence doesn't work -- not as an end and not as a means. The best defense is a world drenched in love, not a world drenched in armaments.
We should pray for the victims and the families of those who have been hurt or murdered in these crazy acts. We should also pray that America does not return to "business as usual," but rather turns to a period of reflection, coming back into touch with our common humanity, asking ourselves how our institutions can best embody our highest values. We may need a global day of atonement and repentance dedicated to finding a way to turn the direction of our society at every level, a return to the notion that every human life is sacred, that "the bottom line" should be the creation of a world of love and caring, and that the best way to prevent these kinds of acts is not to turn ourselves into a police state, but turn ourselves into a society in which social justice, love, and compassion are so prevalent that violence becomes only a distant memory.
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Jeanette Rankin, first woman elected to Congress, 1916: ³You can no more win a war than win an earthquake.²
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The Sukkah and the World Trade Center
by Rabbi Arthur Waskow
In just a few weeks, the Jewish community will celebrate the harvest festival by building "sukkot."
What is a "sukkah"? Just a fragile hut with a leafy roof, the most vulnerable of houses. Vulnerable in time, where it lasts for only a week each year. Vulnerable in space, where its roof must be not only leafy but leaky -- letting in the starlight, and gusts of wind and rain.
In the evening prayers , we plead with God -- "Ufros alenu sukkat shlomekha" -- "Spread over all of us Your sukkah of shalom."
Why a sukkah? -- Why does the prayer plead to God for a "sukkah of shalom" rather than God's "tent" or "house" or "palace" of peace?
Precisely because the sukkah is so vulnerable.
For much of our lives we try to achieve peace and safety by building with steel and concrete and toughness. Pyramids, air raid shelters, Pentagons, World Trade Centers. Hardening what might be targets and, like Pharaoh, hardening our hearts against what is foreign to us.
But the sukkah comes to remind us: We are in truth all vulnerable. If "a hard rain gonna fall," it will fall on all of us.
Americans have felt invulnerable. The oceans, our wealth, our military power have made up what seemed an invulnerable shield. We may have begun feeling uncomfortable in the nuclear age, but no harm came to us. Yet yesterday the ancient truth came home: We all live in a sukkah.
Not only the targets of attack but also the instruments of attack were among our proudest possessions: the sleek transcontinental airliners. They availed us nothing. Worse than nothing.
Even the greatest oceans do not shield us; even the mightiest buildings do not shield us; even the wealthiest balance sheets and the most powerful weapons do not shield us.
There are only wispy walls and leaky roofs between us. The planet is in fact one interwoven web of life. I MUST love my neighbor as I do myself, because my neighbor and myself are interwoven. If I hate my neighbor, the hatred will recoil upon me.
What is the lesson, when we learn that we -- all of us -- live in a sukkah? How do we make such a vulnerable house into a place of shalom, of peace and security and harmony and wholeness?
The lesson is that only a world where we all recognize our vulnerability can become a world where all communities feel responsible to all other communities. And only such a world can prevent such acts of rage and murder.
If I treat my neighbor's pain and grief as foreign, I will end up suffering when my neighbor's pain and grief curdle into rage.
But if I realize that in simple fact the walls between us are full of holes, I can reach through them in compassion and connection.
Suspicion about the perpetrators of this act of infamy has fallen upon some groups that espouse a tortured version of Islam. Whether or not this turns out to be so, America must open its heart and mind to the pain and grief of those in the Arab and Muslim worlds who feel excluded, denied, unheard, disempowered, defeated.
This does not mean ignoring or forgiving whoever wrought such bloodiness. They must be found and brought to trial, without killing still more innocents and wrecking still more the fragile "sukkot" of lawfulness. Their violence must be halted, their rage must be calmed -- and the pain behind them must be heard and addressed.
Of course not every demand becomes legitimate, just because it is an expression of pain. But we must open the ears of our hearts to ask: Have we had a hand in creating the pain? Can we act to lighten it?
Instead of entering upon a "war of civilizations," we must pursue a planetary peace.
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US troops in Pak for assault
<http://www.kashmirtimes.com/world.htm>
ISLAMABAD, Sep 15 (uni) Preparing for an assault on Afghanistan, a contingent of US marines and the FBI officials have landed in Pakistan for launching target-orientedı operation against Saudi fugitive Osama Bin Laden, prime suspect in black Tuesday string of attacks on the United States.
Leading Pakistani daily The Newsı reported today a contingent of the special services group of the US marines (green seals) and the FBI officials landed at the Islamabad International Airport at wee hours yesterday.
A military plane brought the us troops to Islamabad, who were later taken to an unknown place, the paper said.
The airport remained closed from 0300 hrs to 0500 hrs on Friday morning which according to the paper was the time of arrival of US troops.
Senior Pakistani official confirmed a military movement was going on at the airport during its closure.
"There is a normal schedule of such type of exercises, and one should not worry about it," the official said.
The green seals are the latest version of super-trained, highly sophisticated, armed with hitech weaponry and aided by satellite-guided navigation commandos, who are given special and difficult assignments.
According to the paper, it was perceived that the elite green seals would change the mode of their action in case of missing bin laden. They would spread across Afghanistan, sniffing on Osamaıs whereabouts. And in the event of detection, they would guide the us navy aircraft in the possible airstrikes, the paper added.
It said there were speculation that the green seals would also conduct a quick survey of the region before an anticipated attack on a larger scale, if, at all, required.
The green seals have conducted joint exercises with the Pakistan ssgs on multiple occasions on the pakistani soil since 1998, when the US first planned to hunt down Osama. These exercises were reportedly conducted in cherat, attock with a specific view the terrain was similar to the Afghanistanıs terrain, the paper said.
United States President George W Bush was on Saturday huddled in high-level talks with his top advisors at Camp David to prepare military response to Tuesdayıs terror attacks.
The meeting with Secretary of State Colin Powell, Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and national security adviser Condoleezza Rice followed the authorisation by the Congress to the President to use "all necessary and appropriate force" in retaliation.
Bush is expected to use his regular Saturday radio address to move away from healing touch to harsher language that "educates the public about the struggle that lies ahead".
Bush has already declared a national emergency and given the military the authority it needs to call up 50,000 reservists. The Pentagon has said the first 35,000 reservists to be called up - including fighter jet pilots and crews - would be for "homeland defence" - to protect US cities. They will include 13,000 airmen, 10,000 army soldiers, 7,500 marines, 3,000 navy personnel and 2,000 coastguard troops.
Bush travelled to Camp David for Saturdayıs "decision-making meeting" after making his first visit to New York since the disaster. He addressed rescue workers through a loudspeaker, with his arm around a firefighter. As some of the crowd shouted that they could not hear, he replied: "I can hear you and the rest of the world hears you and the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon."
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Editorıs Note: Since space is so limited, only the web addresses of these background articles are presented here. The immensity of the events of last Tuesday morning is overwhelming. Nevertheless, a world of facts exists, and the wealth of information and perspectives must be digested and used to inform public opinion and public action. The corporate media continue to prove themselves inadequate. As one member of the US Congress observed in 1917, ³In war, the first casualty is the truth.²
Ayaz Amir, The fury of despair: Dawn, September 14, 2001
<http://www.dawn.com/weekly/ayaz/ayaz.htm>
Pamela Constable, For Pakistan, Dilemma in a Crisis: Washington Post, September 14, 2001
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/world/A34083-2001Sep14.html>
Robert Fisk, Terror in America: The Nation, October 1, 2001
<http://www.TheNation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20011001&s=fisk>
The Guardian, Shoulder to shoulder: But support cannot be unconditional: The Guardian, September 13, 2001
<http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4255820,00.html>
Robert B. Reich, Finding Our Enemy: American Prospect, September 13, 2001
<http://prospect.org/webfeatures/2001/09/reich-r-09-13.html>
Reuters, Thomas Upbeat on Trade Bill For Bush: The Washington Post, September 14, 2001
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A28623-2001Sep14.html>
Edward Said, Islam and the West are inadequate banners: The London Observer, September 16, 2001
<http://www.observer.co.uk/comment/story/0,6903,552764,00.html>
Daniel Williams, Israeli Arabs Fear War on Islam: Washington Post, September 14, 2001
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/world/A34246-2001Sep14.html>
Patricia J. Williams, Pax Americana: The Nation, October 1, 2001
<http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20011001&s=williams>
Howard Zinn, Violence Doesn't Work: The Progressive, September 15, 2001
<http://www.progressive.org/webex/wxzinn091401.html>
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The following letter by a Palestinian cleric in Jerusalem ... delivers an accurate description of the responses of Palestinians under siege.
Mark
Dear Friends,
I've had numerous emails from people asking me to help interpret the scenes they have watched of Palestinians 'celebrating' after the event. Yes, there were some gatherings of people, particularly in Nablus, who were shown in the very early hours of the horrible attacks in the US on the street, dancing and cheering, and passing out chocolate. But, these expressions were few and certainly did not represent the feelings or mood of the general population. The deep shock and horror of the Palestinian people, the real sorrow for all the dead and wounded, was, and continues to be, unseen by the world, particularly in the USA. It is the story unheard.
Because those few scenes were disturbing, the easy response is to cast judgment on the participants, naming those 'celebrating' as inhuman, despots, or despicable. The more difficult response, though, particularly in the midst of grief, is to ask the questions about what might drive people, men, women and children, to such actions. One might remember that the people who were seen 'celebrating' are a people who for almost a year have been under a brutal siege, who due to the siege have been unable to feed their families and hover on the brink of poverty and despair, who have watched their children and their parents killed by bullets, tank shells and guided missiles, most of which are supplied to the Israeli Occupation Army by the USA. One might remember such things as one watches those images. Attempting to understand motivations doesn't discount our feelings of anguish at such scenes, but does allow us to keep humanity a bit more in tack in a time of such utter brokenness.
But, more importantly to me is what has mostly gone unseen by the American public. I have to ask why these scenes of a few Palestinians been shown again and again and again, as if they capture the 'truth' of Palestine. How few cameras have caught the spontaneous sorrow, despair, tears and heartache of the vast majority of the Palestinian people. As the news unfolded here on Tuesday afternoon about the extent of the attacks, people gathered, as people did everywhere, in front of television screens to learn as much as possible. My phone rang and rang as Palestinians from around the West Bank called to express their horror and their condolences.
Yesterday following a prayer service held at St. George's Anglican Cathedral, I talked briefly to the US Consul General in Jerusalem. We talked about the scenes from here which were most prevalent on the TV. He told me that his office had received a stack of faxes of condolences from Palestinians and Palestinian Organizations 'this high' (indicating a stack of about 12 inches). He asked his staff to fax a copy of every last one of them to CNN to give a different visual image from Palestine.
When we left the cathedral after the service, we drove by the American Consulate in East Jerusalem. Gathered there were about 30 Palestinian Muslim schoolgirls with their teachers. Looking grief-stricken, they held their bouquets of dark flowers and stood behind their row of candles. Silently, they kept vigil outside our Consulate. But no cameras captured their quiet sorrow.
When I got home, my neighbor explained that her son who is in 8th grade came home in the afternoon and talked to her about the students reactions at school. He told her that everyone was talking about what had happened. He said that many were asking "how could someone do that?" "Is someone human who can carry out such acts?" He went on to tell her that many of the girls were crying. Friends, then, began stopping by my home. Palestinian Christian and Muslim came together, visiting me to express their sorrow and to ask what they could do. Again, the phone rang incessantly with Palestinians asking if everyone I knew was okay and asking if they could do anything to help.
As we talked many went on to tell of stories of their loved ones who are in the States - relatives they were worried about having been injured or killed or who had been subject to harassment in the last couple of days. Others talked of having received emails from people who had been supporters of their work who wrote saying "I can never again support the Palestinian people," as if somehow Palestinians everywhere were suddenly responsible for the attacks in the States.
The remarkable thing to me, though, was that despite such messages, these same people still wrote letters of condolences, made phone calls to friends, and asked what they could do to help. Despite the world, and particularly the American world, not seeing them or seeing them only as 'terrorists', Palestinians continued to express their common humanity with people everywhere as they shared in the heartache and dismay.
Trusting in God's everlasting presence,
Sandra
Rev. Sandra Olewine
United Methodist Liaison - Jerusalem
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Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr: "The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it ... Through violence you may murder the hater, but you do not murder hate. In fact, violence merely increases hate ... Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out hate; only love can do that."
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Wednesday, September 20
vigil 6-7 pm Copley Square
organizing meeting to follow @ 7:15
Sunday, September 23
12:30-2 gathering Copley Square
"Against the Cycle of Violence"
These meetings sponsored by representatives from: Alliance for a Democratic and Secular South Asia, American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, Boston Coalition for Palestinian Rights, Boston Mobilization for Survival, Boston Women's International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF), Cambridge Peace Commission, CPPAX, Grassroots International, Jewish Women for Justice in Israel/Palestine, Massachusetts Peace Action, VISIONS for Peace with Justice in Israel/Palestine, Women's Action for New Directions (WAND), World Federalists of New England
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