P E A C E  AND

NUCLEAR DISARMAMENT:

A CALL TO ACTION

by U.S. Rep Dennis Kucinich

Date:   4/5/02

". . . Come my friends, 'tis not too late

    to seek a newer world," . .

Alfred Lord Tennyson

If you believe that humanity has a higher destiny,

if you believe we can evolve,

 and become better than we are;

if you believe we can overcome the scourge of war

and someday fulfill the dream of harmony and peace earth,

 let us begin the conversation today.

 Let us exchange our ideas.

 Let us plan together, act together

 and create peace together.

 This is a call for common sense,

 for peaceful, non-violent citizen action

to protect our precious world from widening war

and from stumbling into a nuclear catastrophe.

The climate for conflict has intensified,

with the struggle between Pakistan and India,

the China-Taiwan tug of war, and the increased

bloodshed between Israel and the Palestinians.

United States' troop deployments in the Philippines,

Yemen, Georgia, Columbia and Indonesia

create new possibilities for expanded war.

An invasion of Iraq is planned.

The recent disclosure that Russia, China, Iraq,

Iran, Syria, North Korea, and Libya are considered by

the United States as possible targets for nuclear attack

catalyzes potential conflicts everywhere.

These crucial political decisions promoting

increased military actions,

 plus a new nuclear first-use policy,

are occurring without the consent

of the American people,

 without public debate,

without public hearings,

 without public votes.

The President is taking Congress's approval

of responding to the Sept. 11 terrorists

as a license to flirt with nuclear war.

"Politics ought to stay out of fighting a war,"

the President has been quoted as saying

on March 13th 2002.

 Yet Article 1, Section 8 of the United States Constitution

explicitly requires that Congress take responsibility

when it comes to declaring war.

This President is very popular, according to the polls.

 But polls are not a substitute for democratic process.

Attributing a negative connotation here to politics

or dismissing constitutionally mandated

 congressional oversight belies reality:

 Spending $400 billion a year for defense is a political decision.

Committing troops abroad is a political decision.

War is a political decision.

When men and women die on the battlefield

that is the result of a political decision.

The use of nuclear weapons,

which can end the lives of millions,

is a profound political decision.

In a monarchy there need be no political decisions.

 In a democracy, all decisions are political,

in that the derive from the consent of the governed.

In a democracy, budgetary, military and national objectives

must be subordinate to the political process.

Before we celebrate an imperial presidency,

let it be said that the lack of free

 and open political process,

the lack of free and open political debate

 and the lack of free and open political dissent

can be fatal in a democracy.

We have reached a moment in our country's history

 where it is urgent that people everywhere

speak out as president of his or her own life,

to protect the peace of the nation

and world within and without.

We should speak out and caution leaders

who generate fear through talk

of the endless war or the final conflict.

We should appeal to our leaders to consider

that their own bellicose thoughts,

 words and deeds are reshaping consciousness

and can have an adverse effect on our nation.

 Because when one person thinks:

 fight! he or she finds a fight.

One faction thinks: war! and starts a war.

One nation thinks: nuclear! and approaches the abyss.

And what of one nation

which thinks peace,

 and seeks peace?

Neither individuals nor nations exist in a vacuum,

which is why we have a serious responsibility

for each other in this world.

It is also urgent that we find those places

of war in our own lives,

and begin healing the world

through healing ourselves.

 Each of us is a citizen of a common planet,

bound to a common destiny.

So connected are we,

that each of us has the power

 to be the eyes of the world,

the voice of the world,

the conscience of the world,

 or the end of the world.

 And as each one of us chooses,

so becomes the world.

Each of us is architect of this world.

Our thoughts, the concepts.

 Our words, the designs.

Our deeds the bricks and mortar of our daily lives.

Which is why we should always take care

to regard the power of our thoughts and words,

 and the commands they send into action

through time and space.

Some of our leaders have been

thinking and talking about nuclear war.

In the past week there has been much news

about a planning document which describes

how and when America might wage nuclear war.

The Nuclear Posture Review recently released

 to the media by the government:

1. Assumes that the United States has the right

 to launch a pre-emptive nuclear strike.

2. Equates nuclear weapons with conventional weapons.

3. Attempts to minimize the consequences

 of the use of nuclear weapons.

4. Promotes nuclear response to a

   chemical or biological attack.

Some dismiss this review as routine

government planning. But it becomes ominous

 when taken in the context of a war on terrorism

which keeps expanding its boundaries, rhetorically and literally.

The President equates the

 "war on terrorism"

 with World War II.

He expresses a desire to have the nuclear option

"on the table."

 He unilaterally withdraws from the ABM treaty.

He seeks $8.9 billion to fund deployment of a missile shield.

 He institutes, without congressional knowledge,

a shadow government in a bunker

outside our nation's Capitol.

 He tries to pass off as arms reduction,

 the storage of, instead of the elimination of,

 nuclear weapons.

Two generations ago we lived with nuclear nightmares.

We feared and hated the Russians

who feared and hated us.

 We feared and hated the "godless,

atheistic" communists.

In our schools,

 we dutifully put our head between our legs

and practiced duck-and-cover drills.

In our nightmares, we saw the long,

 slow arc of a Soviet missile flash

 into our very neighborhood.

We got down on our knees and prayed for peace.

We surveyed, wide eyed, pictures of

the destruction of Nagasaki and Hiroshima.

We supported the elimination of all nuclear weapons.

We knew that if you "nuked" others you "nuked" yourself.

The splitting of the atom for destructive purposes

admits a split consciousness, the compartmentalized thinking

of Us vs. Them, the dichotomized thinking,

which spawns polarity and leads to war.

The proposed use of nuclear weapons,

pollutes the psyche with the arrogance of infinite power.

 It creates delusions of domination of matter and space.

It is dehumanizing through its calculations of mass casualties.

 We must overcome doomthinkers and sayers

 who invite a world descending,

 disintegrating into a nuclear disaster.

With a world at risk,

we must find the bombs in our own lives and disarm them.

We must listen to that quiet inner voice which counsels

that the survival of all is achieved through the unity of all.

We must overcome our fear of each other,

 by seeking out the humanity within each of us.

The human heart contains every possibility

of race, creed, language, religion, and politics.

We are one in our commonalities.

Must we always fear our differences?

We can overcome our fears by not feeding our fears

with more war and nuclear confrontations.

 We must ask our leaders to unify us in courage.

We need to create a new,

clear vision of a world as one.

 A new, clear vision of people

working out their differences peacefully.

 

A new, clear vision with the teaching of nonviolence,

nonviolent intervention, and mediation.

 A new, clear vision where people can live in harmony

within their families, their communities and within themselves.

 A new clear vision of peaceful coexistence in a world of tolerance.

At this moment peril we must move away from fear's paralysis.

 This is a call to action:

 to replace expanded war

with expanded peace.

This is a call for action to place the very survival

of this planet on the agenda of all people, everywhere.

As citizens of a common planet,

we have an obligation to

ourselves and our posterity.

We must demand that our nation and all nations

put down the nuclear sword.

We must demand that our nation and all nations:

Abide by the principles of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

Stop the development of new nuclear weapons.

Take all nuclear weapons systems off alert.

Persist towards total,

worldwide elimination

of all nuclear weapons.

Our nation must:

Revive the Anti Ballistic Missile treaty.

Sign and enforce the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.

Abandon plans to build a so-called missile shield.

Prohibit the introduction of weapons into outer space.

We are in a climate where people expect debate

within our two party system

to produce policy alternatives.

 However both major political parties

 have fallen short.

People who ask "Where is the Democratic Party?"

 and expect to hear debate may be disappointed.

When peace is not on the agenda of our political parties

or our governments then it must be the work

and the duty of each citizen of the world.

 This is the time to organize for peace.

 This is the time for new thinking.

This is the time to conceive of peace as not

simply being the absence of violence,

but the active presence of the capacity

for a higher evolution of human awareness.

This is the time to concieve of peace

as respect, trust, and integrity.

 This is the time to tap the infinite capabilities of humanity

to transform consciousness which compels violence

at a personal, group, national or international levels.

This is the time to develop a new compassion

for others and ourselves.

When terrorists threaten our security,

we must enforce the law and bring

terrorists to justice within our system

of constitutional justice, without undermining

the very civil liberties which permits

our democracy to breathe.

Our own instinct for life, which inspires our breath

and informs our pulse, excites our capacity to reason.

 Which is why we must pay attention when we

sense a threat to survival.

That is why we must speak out now

 to protect this nation, all nations,

 and the entire planet and:

Challenge those who believe that war is inevitable.

Challenge those who believe in a nuclear right.

Challenge those who would build new nuclear weapons.

Challenge those who seek nuclear re-armament.

Challenge those who seek nuclear escalation.

Challenge those who would make of any nation a nuclear target.

Challenge those who would threaten to use nuclear weapons

 against civilian populations.

Challenge those who would break nuclear treaties.

Challenge those who think and think about nuclear weapons,

to think about peace.

It is practical to work for peace.

I speak of peace and diplomacy

 not just for the sake of peace itself.

But, for practical reasons, we must work for peace

 as a means of achieving permanent security.

 It is similarly practical to work for total nuclear disarmament,

 particularly when nuclear arms do not even come close

 to addressing the real security problems which confront our nation,

witness the events of September 11, 2001.

We can make war archaic.

 Skeptics may dismiss the possibility that a nation

which spends $400 billion a year for military purposes

can somehow convert swords into plowshares.

Yet the very founding and the history of this country

demonstrates the creative possibilities of America.

 We are a nation which is known for realizing impossible dreams.

Ours is a nation which in its second century abolished slavery,

which many at the time considered impossible.

 Ours is a nation where women won the right to vote,

which many at the time considered impossible.

Ours is a nation which institutionalized

the civil rights movement,

which many at the time considered impossible.

 If we have the courage to claim peace,

with the passion, the emotion and the integrity

 with which we have claimed independence,

freedom and, equality we can become that nation

which makes non-violence an organizing principle in our society,

 and in doing so change the world.

That is the purpose of HR 2459.

 It is a bill to create a Department of Peace.

 It envisions new structures to help create

peace in our homes, in our families,

 in our schools, in our neighborhoods,

 in our cities, and in our nation.

It aspires to create conditions for peace

within and to create conditions for peace worldwide.

 It considers the conditions which cause people

to become the terrorists of the future,

 issues of poverty, scarcity and exploitation.

It is practical to make outer space safe from weapons,

 so that humanity can continue to pursue

 a destiny among the stars.

HR 3616 seeks to ban weapons in space,

 to keep the stars a place of dreams,

of new possibilities, of transcendence.

We can achieve this practical vision of peace,

 if we are ready to work for it.

 People worldwide need to be meet with likeminded people,

about peace and nuclear disarmament, now.

People worldwide need to gather in peace, now.

People worldwide need to march and to pray for peace, now.

 People worldwide need to be connecting with each other

on the web, for peace, now.

 We are in a new era of electronic democracy,

 where the world wide web, numerous web sites

 and bulletin boards enable new organizations,

 exercising freedom of speech, freedom of assembly,

freedom of association, to spring into being instantly.

Thespiritoffreedom.com is such a web site.

It is dedicated to becoming an electronic forum for peace,

for sustainability, for renewal and for revitalization.

It is a forum which strives for the restoration of

a sense of community through the empowerment of self,

through commitment of self to the lives of others,

to the life of the community,

to the life of the nation,

to the life of the world.

Where war making is profoundly uncreative in its destruction,

peacemaking can be deeply creative.

 We need to communicate with each other

the ways in which we work in our communities

 to make this a more peaceful world.

I welcome your ideas at dkucinich@aol.com

or at www.thespiritoffreedom.com.

 We can share our thoughts and discuss ways

 in which we have brought or will bring them into action.

Now is the time to think,

to take action

 and use our talents and abilities

to create peace:

in our families.

in our block clubs.

in our neighborhoods.

in our places of worship.

in our schools and universities.

in our labor halls.

in our parent-teacher organizations.

Now is the time to think, speak,

 write, organize and take action to create

peace as a social imperative,

as an economic imperative,

 and as a political imperative.

 Now is the time to think, speak,

write, organize, march, rally,

hold vigils and take other nonviolent action

 to create peace in our cities,

in our nation and in the world.

 And as the hymn says,

"Let there be peace on earth

and let it begin with me."

This is the work of the human family,

of people all over the world demanding

that governments and non-governmental actors

 alike put down their nuclear weapons.

This is the work of the human family,

 responding in this moment of

crisis to protect our nation,

 this planet and all life within it.

 We can achieve both nuclear disarmament and peace.

As we understand that all people

of the world are interconnected,

 we can achieve both nuclear disarmament and peace.

We can accomplish this through upholding an holistic vision

 where the claims of all living beings to

the right of survival  are recognized.

We can achieve both nuclear disarmament and peace

through being a living testament to a Human Rights Covenant

 where each person on this planet is entitled to a life

where he or she may consciously evolve

in mind, body and spirit.

Nuclear disarmament and peace are the signposts

toward the uplit path of an even brighter human condition

wherein we can through our conscious efforts

evolve and reestablish the context of our existence

 from peril to peace,

from revolution to evolution.

 Think peace.

Speak peace.

 Act peace.

 Peace.

Email responses to info@thespiritoffreedom.com

or Dkucinich@aol.com

_______________________________

Global Renaissance Alliance

P.O. Box 3259

Center Line, MI 48015

(586)754-8105

(586)754-8106 fax

www.renaissancealliance.org

office@renaissancealliance.org