Remarks from Kathy Kelly, World BEYOND War Board President at WBW’s first annual online benefit event:
For the past few years many of us have been meeting in zoom calls.
Glimpsing homes and studies interests me, though I feel a bit snoopy.
Well, behind me always is a framed photo of St. Oscar Romero, the
archbishop of El Salvador who underwent a conversion, aligned himself
with the most impoverished, railed against war, and was assassinated.
Some of you know about a U.S. military base in Fort Benning, GA which
trained Salvadoran soldiers to engage in disappearances, torture,
assassination and death squad actions. Some decades ago, three friends,
Roy Bourgeois, Larry Rosebough, and Linda Ventimiglia, dressed in
military fatigues and entered the base. They climbed a tall southern
pine tree, and then turned on a boom box which blasted Romero’s words
across the base as though coming from the heavens: “In the name of God
in the name of our suffering brothers and sisters in El Salvador, I beg
you, I order you, – stop the repression! Stop the killing!
Roy, Larry and Linda were jailed. Archbishop Romero was assassinated,
but those ringing words are still with us. Stop the repression! Stop
the killing!
War is never the answer.
I’ve been reading collected writings of Phil Berrigan, a founder of
the Plowshares movement, who evolved from soldier to scholar to
stalwart activist. He began speaking out and acting in the civil rights
movement, then in the anti-Vietnam war movement and then, for decades,
opposing nuclear weapons. He was likened to a “jack-in-the-box” prophet.
The U.S. doled out long prison sentences and he always popped back up
again, telling friends: “Meet me at the Pentagon!” In his last speech
at the Pentagon, opposing the imminent U.S. war against Afghanistan,
Phil pleaded with the assembled activists: “Don’t Get Tired!”
Two of Phil’s tireless friends are in a hospital tonight, in San
Francisco. Jan and David Hartsough are with their family, surrounding
David’s hospital bed where he is in critical condition. Jan asked all of
David’s friends to hold him in the light.
David has guided World BEYOND War, never tiring of activism and
always encouraging us to engage in nonviolent resistance. I propose a
toast to David and Jan Hartsough. In my cup is Irish breakfast tea
because I didn’t want to appear tired when offering this salute.
Yes, let us raise our glasses, raise our voices, and, quite importantly, raise funds.
We need funds to keep us going. There are bases to be closed, books
to be written, study groups to be led, and military corporations to be
rehabbed. The website is brilliant. New interns dazzle us. But we must
be able to offer living wages to this fine, generous, wise staff, and
wouldn’t it be great if our stunning executive director didn’t have to
puzzle over how to raise money.
The coffers of major Merchants of Death bulge. And the people whose lives are forever altered receive not a pittance of help.
We don’t want corporate militarists to continue taking over our
government, schools, work places, media and even our faith-based
institutions. They are robber barons of the worst order. We need World
BEYOND War to help build true security, worldwide, the security that comes from extending hands of friendship and respect.
The media recently focused on a Russian weapon peddler, Mr. Bout, and
called him a Merchant of Death. But we’re surrounded by and infiltrated
by Merchants of Death worldwide in the form of weapon manufacturers.
We must raise funds to help us raise our voices, decrying war and helping voice the cries of war’s most vulnerable victims.
Tonight, I’m thinking especially about children in war zones,
children frightened by explosions, night raids, gun fire; children
living under economic siege wars, many of them too hungry to cry.
Salman Rushdie said “those who are displaced by war are the shining
shards that reflect the truth.” World BEYOND War tries, mightily, to
illuminate the truths about war, listening to those most harmed in wars,
and paying attention to the bases, the resisters, and the educators.
War is never the answer. Can we abolish war? I believe we can and we must.
Thank you for helping World BEYOND War enact carefully thought out
plans as we reach out to and learn from growing groups of activists in
every country on earth.
May we salute and be guided by the saints of our time. May we gain
insights into one another’s lives and build tireless solidarity. And may
David Hartsough be held in the light. Lead kindly light. Lead to a
World BEYOND War.
World BEYOND War is a global network of volunteers, chapters, and affiliated organizations advocating for the abolition of the institution of war.
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