The insanity of our drug policy and Michael Phelps.

As most people know by now, a student at the University of South Carolina took a photo on his camera phone of Michael Phelps smoking marijuana. The Richland County Sheriff's Office is investigating and may bring charges against Phelps.

It's complete idiocy to to prosecute Phelps (or anyone else) for smoking marijuana in the privacy of his, her, or any other home. Driving over the speed limit is also illegal, but I break the speed limit every day, as does just about everyone else I know. Does it make sense for the police to spend every waking second catching every single speeder? No. It would be a poor utilization of resources. As is trying to prosecute drug crimes. Legal authorities have only so many resources to stop crime. I think they should put their resources where it will do the most good; community policing, investigating violent crime, teen programs to limit gang violence, etc..

I also think we need to radically rethink our drug laws, which have been disastrous for our country. They have filled the criminal justice system with non-violent offenders, and they have prvented billions of dollars in tax revenue that legalization would provide. I'm for the legalization of all "illegal" drugs, but I'm especially dismayed by our policy concerning marijuana, which is only illegal because in the 1930's, the main people who smoked it were darker than the people who made the laws. Haven't we evolved enough as a society to leave our nativist and racist drug policies behind? I hope so.

The logic of the potential charges against Phelps is patently absurd. The people I've heard defend the charges use the circular logic that follows.

1) Drugs are bad.

2) So when successful people take drugs, like the all-time Olympic Champion (and the current president), they demonstrate that drug use isn't that bad.

3) So we must penalize successful people harsher than everyone because,

4) when successful people who use drugs get into a lot of trouble, it proves drugs are bad.

Michael Phelps got arrested at 19 for drunk driving, an act that put his life and the lives of others at risk. It earned barely a mention in the press. Yet, because he smoked marijuana in the safe haven of a college house party, Phelps risks prosecution and the loss of millions in endorsements.

It's about time we talk about reforming our insane drug policy, which has stressed our prison system and our criminal court system beyond measure.

More Adventures in Healthcare

Yesterday, when I went to Blue Cross/Blue Shield of RI (BCBSRI) to renew my healthcare, I discovered my rates had increased by over 20%.

Part of this increase (11%) was the elimination of the health risk factor, which moved rates up and down based on health factors. Although I ended up on the wrong side of the fence on this one, it strikes me as very reasonable, as insurance companies like Blue Cross had been raising and lowering rates based on information other than health factors. Blue Cross had told me it was an across the board increase for all small businesses and self-employed people. I only found out the relevant information after talking with a helpful lawyer at the state Office of the Health Insurance Commisioner.

8% of my increase was due to age/gender factors. I'm not sure what happens at age 38 to warrant such an increase, especially since I'm still in the 35-39 age band. I found the reasoning by BSBCRI to be confusing and less than convincing. Finally, health insurance costs went up across the board by 1.3%.

I had also applied for Dental insurance through BCBSRI, and was told I would not be eligible to receive benefits until April, because BCBSRI Dental only enrolls quarterly. My application, which I completed in late December, had been lost. The woman at the help desk took over 45 minutes to find it. To its credit, BCBSRI Dental reinstated me for the first of the year.

The entire process was confusing and frustrating. The Answers I received were nebulous, and no one could tell me why my rates had increased by such a huge margin, only how they had increased. The 3 people I spoke to all told me there was nothing they could do.

Is this the "choice" and "personal service" that prevents universal, government sponsored health care? I couldn't have felt more powerless or felt more like a number after my interactions with Blue Cross yesterday.

Frankly, my problems are extremely minor compared to many who cannot afford health insurance and to those who have uncovered medical conditions, whose relationship with medical insurance companies can be catastrophic and life altering.

Is this the best we can do?

Thinking about kids and inequity

A few hours ago, I was sitting in an office waiting to meet a student at the Moses Brown School. On ther table, there was a thick glossy magazine called "Rustic Pathways", that offered, for a few thousand dollars, diverse vacations for high school students in the far corners of the world. The magazine was filled with pictures of smiling, fresh scrubbed kids riding elephants, learning languages, building houses, and carrying water to villages. It sounds like an amazing experience, the kind of experience that can open eyes and change lives, for those few lucky enough to afford such a trip.

Although I am not employed by the school, I spend most of my days at the Moses Brown School, a quaker school that offers rigorous academics and progressive values for the children of affluence. Part of me wishes I could say these kids were spoiled brats who don't deserve their good fortune, and although one or two may approach that definition, the vast majority of the kids I work with are great kids. They are smart, curious, and kind. They are thoughtful and serious. They have aspirations, goals, and dreams. They are respectful, yet not afraid to speak their mind. They are exactly the kinds of kids I hope mine would be someday, should I ever have kids.

Recently, President and Michelle Obama enrolled their children at a very similar school to Moses Brown, Sidwell Friends, another expensive, private quaker school. Sashia and Malia will be given the love, support and opportunities to be great kids. I cannot blame the Obamas, or any parents, for wanting the best for their children. After spending 5 years here, it would be hard for me to believe that a school like Moses Brown isn't in the best interest for every kid. Sure, I have some questions about curriculum and structure, but it's hard to argue with the results.

Yet, the fantastic opportunities Rustic Pathways and Moses Brown offer are only available to the wealthy or the very talented. Most kids, and especially our most vulnerable kids, don't get that benefit. I can't blame any parent for wanting to send their kid to a school like Moses Brown, and if I were a parent, in all honesty, I would too.

There is injustice in this system, yet it's hard to find the blame. As a student, I experienced a different kind of private school, whose focus was creating even greater economic opportunities for its students and maintain the status quo. It was easy to find the blame there, but what about schools that teach progressive values, provide scholarships for deserving bstudents, yet still cater to those the lucky few. That's a harder nut to crack. No answers here, just questions.

MLK

This is a sermon Martin Luther King gave exactly one year before he died, urging the United States to end the war in Vietnam. If anything, it reads as more true and more important today than when he delivered it in 1967. I've heard it twice in the past two days, once during the MLK service this Sunday at Bell Street Chapel, and tonight at Black Rep theatre. The election of Barack Obama is one part of Martin's dream. But as long as we kill our young men and woman by sending them onto the battlefield instead of using their energy to eradicate injustices in the world, Martin's dream is still one yet to come. But deep in my heart, I do believe, we will overcome someday. Amen.

I come to this magnificent house of worship tonight because my conscience leaves me no other choice. I join with you in this meeting because I am in deepest agreement with the aims and work of the organization which has brought us together: Clergy and Laymen Concerned about Vietnam. The recent statement of your executive committee are the sentiments of my own heart and I found myself in full accord when I read its opening lines: "A time comes when silence is betrayal." That time has come for us in relation to Vietnam.

The truth of these words is beyond doubt but the mission to which they call us is a most difficult one. Even when pressed by the demands of inner truth, men do not easily assume the task of opposing their government's policy, especially in time of war. Nor does the human spirit move without great difficulty against all the apathy of conformist thought within one's own bosom and in the surrounding world. Moreover when the issues at hand seem as perplexed as they often do in the case of this dreadful conflict we are always on the verge of being mesmerized by uncertainty; but we must move on.

Some of us who have already begun to break the silence of the night have found that the calling to speak is often a vocation of agony, but we must speak. We must speak with all the humility that is appropriate to our limited vision, but we must speak. And we must rejoice as well, for surely this is the first time in our nation's history that a significant number of its religious leaders have chosen to move beyond the prophesying of smooth patriotism to the high grounds of a firm dissent based upon the mandates of conscience and the reading of history. Perhaps a new spirit is rising among us. If it is, let us trace its movement well and pray that our own inner being may be sensitive to its guidance, for we are deeply in need of a new way beyond the darkness that seems so close around us.

Over the past two years, as I have moved to break the betrayal of my own silences and to speak from the burnings of my own heart, as I have called for radical departures from the destruction of Vietnam, many persons have questioned me about the wisdom of my path. At the heart of their concerns this query has often loomed large and loud: Why are you speaking about war, Dr. King? Why are you joining the voices of dissent? Peace and civil rights don't mix, they say. Aren't you hurting the cause of your people, they ask? And when I hear them, though I often understand the source of their concern, I am nevertheless greatly saddened, for such questions mean that the inquirers have not really known me, my commitment or my calling. Indeed, their questions suggest that they do not know the world in which they live.

In the light of such tragic misunderstandings, I deem it of signal importance to try to state clearly, and I trust concisely, why I believe that the path from Dexter Avenue Baptist Church -- the church in Montgomery, Alabama, where I began my pastorate -- leads clearly to this sanctuary tonight.

I come to this platform tonight to make a passionate plea to my beloved nation. This speech is not addressed to Hanoi or to the National Liberation Front. It is not addressed to China or to Russia.

Nor is it an attempt to overlook the ambiguity of the total situation and the need for a collective solution to the tragedy of Vietnam. Neither is it an attempt to make North Vietnam or the National Liberation Front paragons of virtue, nor to overlook the role they can play in a successful resolution of the problem. While they both may have justifiable reason to be suspicious of the good faith of the United States, life and history give eloquent testimony to the fact that conflicts are never resolved without trustful give and take on both sides.

Tonight, however, I wish not to speak with Hanoi and the NLF, but rather to my fellow Americans, who, with me, bear the greatest responsibility in ending a conflict that has exacted a heavy price on both continents.

The Importance of Vietnam
Since I am a preacher by trade, I suppose it is not surprising that I have seven major reasons for bringing Vietnam into the field of my moral vision. There is at the outset a very obvious and almost facile connection between the war in Vietnam and the struggle I, and others, have been waging in America. A few years ago there was a shining moment in that struggle. It seemed as if there was a real promise of hope for the poor -- both black and white -- through the poverty program. There were experiments, hopes, new beginnings. Then came the buildup in Vietnam and I watched the program broken and eviscerated as if it were some idle political plaything of a society gone mad on war, and I knew that America would never invest the necessary funds or energies in rehabilitation of its poor so long as adventures like Vietnam continued to draw men and skills and money like some demonic destructive suction tube. So I was increasingly compelled to see the war as an enemy of the poor and to attack it as such.

Perhaps the more tragic recognition of reality took place when it became clear to me that the war was doing far more than devastating the hopes of the poor at home. It was sending their sons and their brothers and their husbands to fight and to die in extraordinarily high proportions relative to the rest of the population. We were taking the black young men who had been crippled by our society and sending them eight thousand miles away to guarantee liberties in Southeast Asia which they had not found in southwest Georgia and East Harlem. So we have been repeatedly faced with the cruel irony of watching Negro and white boys on TV screens as they kill and die together for a nation that has been unable to seat them together in the same schools. So we watch them in brutal solidarity burning the huts of a poor village, but we realize that they would never live on the same block in Detroit. I could not be silent in the face of such cruel manipulation of the poor.

My third reason moves to an even deeper level of awareness, for it grows out of my experience in the ghettoes of the North over the last three years -- especially the last three summers. As I have walked among the desperate, rejected and angry young men I have told them that Molotov cocktails and rifles would not solve their problems. I have tried to offer them my deepest compassion while maintaining my conviction that social change comes most meaningfully through nonviolent action. But they asked -- and rightly so -- what about Vietnam? They asked if our own nation wasn't using massive doses of violence to solve its problems, to bring about the changes it wanted. Their questions hit home, and I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today -- my own government. For the sake of those boys, for the sake of this government, for the sake of hundreds of thousands trembling under our violence, I cannot be silent.

For those who ask the question, "Aren't you a civil rights leader?" and thereby mean to exclude me from the movement for peace, I have this further answer. In 1957 when a group of us formed the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, we chose as our motto: "To save the soul of America." We were convinced that we could not limit our vision to certain rights for black people, but instead affirmed the conviction that America would never be free or saved from itself unless the descendants of its slaves were loosed completely from the shackles they still wear. In a way we were agreeing with Langston Hughes, that black bard of Harlem, who had written earlier:


O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath--
America will be!

Now, it should be incandescently clear that no one who has any concern for the integrity and life of America today can ignore the present war. If America's soul becomes totally poisoned, part of the autopsy must read Vietnam. It can never be saved so long as it destroys the deepest hopes of men the world over. So it is that those of us who are yet determined that America will be are led down the path of protest and dissent, working for the health of our land.

As if the weight of such a commitment to the life and health of America were not enough, another burden of responsibility was placed upon me in 1964; and I cannot forget that the Nobel Prize for Peace was also a commission -- a commission to work harder than I had ever worked before for "the brotherhood of man." This is a calling that takes me beyond national allegiances, but even if it were not present I would yet have to live with the meaning of my commitment to the ministry of Jesus Christ. To me the relationship of this ministry to the making of peace is so obvious that I sometimes marvel at those who ask me why I am speaking against the war. Could it be that they do not know that the good news was meant for all men -- for Communist and capitalist, for their children and ours, for black and for white, for revolutionary and conservative? Have they forgotten that my ministry is in obedience to the one who loved his enemies so fully that he died for them? What then can I say to the "Vietcong" or to Castro or to Mao as a faithful minister of this one? Can I threaten them with death or must I not share with them my life?

Finally, as I try to delineate for you and for myself the road that leads from Montgomery to this place I would have offered all that was most valid if I simply said that I must be true to my conviction that I share with all men the calling to be a son of the living God. Beyond the calling of race or nation or creed is this vocation of sonship and brotherhood, and because I believe that the Father is deeply concerned especially for his suffering and helpless and outcast children, I come tonight to speak for them.

This I believe to be the privilege and the burden of all of us who deem ourselves bound by allegiances and loyalties which are broader and deeper than nationalism and which go beyond our nation's self-defined goals and positions. We are called to speak for the weak, for the voiceless, for victims of our nation and for those it calls enemy, for no document from human hands can make these humans any less our brothers.

Strange Liberators
And as I ponder the madness of Vietnam and search within myself for ways to understand and respond to compassion my mind goes constantly to the people of that peninsula. I speak now not of the soldiers of each side, not of the junta in Saigon, but simply of the people who have been living under the curse of war for almost three continuous decades now. I think of them too because it is clear to me that there will be no meaningful solution there until some attempt is made to know them and hear their broken cries.

They must see Americans as strange liberators. The Vietnamese people proclaimed their own independence in 1945 after a combined French and Japanese occupation, and before the Communist revolution in China. They were led by Ho Chi Minh. Even though they quoted the American Declaration of Independence in their own document of freedom, we refused to recognize them. Instead, we decided to support France in its reconquest of her former colony.

Our government felt then that the Vietnamese people were not "ready" for independence, and we again fell victim to the deadly Western arrogance that has poisoned the international atmosphere for so long. With that tragic decision we rejected a revolutionary government seeking self-determination, and a government that had been established not by China (for whom the Vietnamese have no great love) but by clearly indigenous forces that included some Communists. For the peasants this new government meant real land reform, one of the most important needs in their lives.

For nine years following 1945 we denied the people of Vietnam the right of independence. For nine years we vigorously supported the French in their abortive effort to recolonize Vietnam.

Before the end of the war we were meeting eighty percent of the French war costs. Even before the French were defeated at Dien Bien Phu, they began to despair of the reckless action, but we did not. We encouraged them with our huge financial and military supplies to continue the war even after they had lost the will. Soon we would be paying almost the full costs of this tragic attempt at recolonization.

After the French were defeated it looked as if independence and land reform would come again through the Geneva agreements. But instead there came the United States, determined that Ho should not unify the temporarily divided nation, and the peasants watched again as we supported one of the most vicious modern dictators -- our chosen man, Premier Diem. The peasants watched and cringed as Diem ruthlessly routed out all opposition, supported their extortionist landlords and refused even to discuss reunification with the north. The peasants watched as all this was presided over by U.S. influence and then by increasing numbers of U.S. troops who came to help quell the insurgency that Diem's methods had aroused. When Diem was overthrown they may have been happy, but the long line of military dictatorships seemed to offer no real change -- especially in terms of their need for land and peace.

The only change came from America as we increased our troop commitments in support of governments which were singularly corrupt, inept and without popular support. All the while the people read our leaflets and received regular promises of peace and democracy -- and land reform. Now they languish under our bombs and consider us -- not their fellow Vietnamese --the real enemy. They move sadly and apathetically as we herd them off the land of their fathers into concentration camps where minimal social needs are rarely met. They know they must move or be destroyed by our bombs. So they go -- primarily women and children and the aged.

They watch as we poison their water, as we kill a million acres of their crops. They must weep as the bulldozers roar through their areas preparing to destroy the precious trees. They wander into the hospitals, with at least twenty casualties from American firepower for one "Vietcong"-inflicted injury. So far we may have killed a million of them -- mostly children. They wander into the towns and see thousands of the children, homeless, without clothes, running in packs on the streets like animals. They see the children, degraded by our soldiers as they beg for food. They see the children selling their sisters to our soldiers, soliciting for their mothers.

What do the peasants think as we ally ourselves with the landlords and as we refuse to put any action into our many words concerning land reform? What do they think as we test our latest weapons on them, just as the Germans tested out new medicine and new tortures in the concentration camps of Europe? Where are the roots of the independent Vietnam we claim to be building? Is it among these voiceless ones?

We have destroyed their two most cherished institutions: the family and the village. We have destroyed their land and their crops. We have cooperated in the crushing of the nation's only non-Communist revolutionary political force -- the unified Buddhist church. We have supported the enemies of the peasants of Saigon. We have corrupted their women and children and killed their men. What liberators?

Now there is little left to build on -- save bitterness. Soon the only solid physical foundations remaining will be found at our military bases and in the concrete of the concentration camps we call fortified hamlets. The peasants may well wonder if we plan to build our new Vietnam on such grounds as these? Could we blame them for such thoughts? We must speak for them and raise the questions they cannot raise. These too are our brothers.

Perhaps the more difficult but no less necessary task is to speak for those who have been designated as our enemies. What of the National Liberation Front -- that strangely anonymous group we call VC or Communists? What must they think of us in America when they realize that we permitted the repression and cruelty of Diem which helped to bring them into being as a resistance group in the south? What do they think of our condoning the violence which led to their own taking up of arms? How can they believe in our integrity when now we speak of "aggression from the north" as if there were nothing more essential to the war? How can they trust us when now we charge them with violence after the murderous reign of Diem and charge them with violence while we pour every new weapon of death into their land? Surely we must understand their feelings even if we do not condone their actions. Surely we must see that the men we supported pressed them to their violence. Surely we must see that our own computerized plans of destruction simply dwarf their greatest acts.

How do they judge us when our officials know that their membership is less than twenty-five percent Communist and yet insist on giving them the blanket name? What must they be thinking when they know that we are aware of their control of major sections of Vietnam and yet we appear ready to allow national elections in which this highly organized political parallel government will have no part? They ask how we can speak of free elections when the Saigon press is censored and controlled by the military junta. And they are surely right to wonder what kind of new government we plan to help form without them -- the only party in real touch with the peasants. They question our political goals and they deny the reality of a peace settlement from which they will be excluded. Their questions are frighteningly relevant. Is our nation planning to build on political myth again and then shore it up with the power of new violence?

Here is the true meaning and value of compassion and nonviolence when it helps us to see the enemy's point of view, to hear his questions, to know his assessment of ourselves. For from his view we may indeed see the basic weaknesses of our own condition, and if we are mature, we may learn and grow and profit from the wisdom of the brothers who are called the opposition.

So, too, with Hanoi. In the north, where our bombs now pummel the land, and our mines endanger the waterways, we are met by a deep but understandable mistrust. To speak for them is to explain this lack of confidence in Western words, and especially their distrust of American intentions now. In Hanoi are the men who led the nation to independence against the Japanese and the French, the men who sought membership in the French commonwealth and were betrayed by the weakness of Paris and the willfulness of the colonial armies. It was they who led a second struggle against French domination at tremendous costs, and then were persuaded to give up the land they controlled between the thirteenth and seventeenth parallel as a temporary measure at Geneva. After 1954 they watched us conspire with Diem to prevent elections which would have surely brought Ho Chi Minh to power over a united Vietnam, and they realized they had been betrayed again.

When we ask why they do not leap to negotiate, these things must be remembered. Also it must be clear that the leaders of Hanoi considered the presence of American troops in support of the Diem regime to have been the initial military breach of the Geneva agreements concerning foreign troops, and they remind us that they did not begin to send in any large number of supplies or men until American forces had moved into the tens of thousands.

Hanoi remembers how our leaders refused to tell us the truth about the earlier North Vietnamese overtures for peace, how the president claimed that none existed when they had clearly been made. Ho Chi Minh has watched as America has spoken of peace and built up its forces, and now he has surely heard of the increasing international rumors of American plans for an invasion of the north. He knows the bombing and shelling and mining we are doing are part of traditional pre-invasion strategy. Perhaps only his sense of humor and of irony can save him when he hears the most powerful nation of the world speaking of aggression as it drops thousands of bombs on a poor weak nation more than eight thousand miles away from its shores.

At this point I should make it clear that while I have tried in these last few minutes to give a voice to the voiceless on Vietnam and to understand the arguments of those who are called enemy, I am as deeply concerned about our troops there as anything else. For it occurs to me that what we are submitting them to in Vietnam is not simply the brutalizing process that goes on in any war where armies face each other and seek to destroy. We are adding cynicism to the process of death, for they must know after a short period there that none of the things we claim to be fighting for are really involved. Before long they must know that their government has sent them into a struggle among Vietnamese, and the more sophisticated surely realize that we are on the side of the wealthy and the secure while we create hell for the poor.

This Madness Must Cease
Somehow this madness must cease. We must stop now. I speak as a child of God and brother to the suffering poor of Vietnam. I speak for those whose land is being laid waste, whose homes are being destroyed, whose culture is being subverted. I speak for the poor of America who are paying the double price of smashed hopes at home and death and corruption in Vietnam. I speak as a citizen of the world, for the world as it stands aghast at the path we have taken. I speak as an American to the leaders of my own nation. The great initiative in this war is ours. The initiative to stop it must be ours.

This is the message of the great Buddhist leaders of Vietnam. Recently one of them wrote these words:

"Each day the war goes on the hatred increases in the heart of the Vietnamese and in the hearts of those of humanitarian instinct. The Americans are forcing even their friends into becoming their enemies. It is curious that the Americans, who calculate so carefully on the possibilities of military victory, do not realize that in the process they are incurring deep psychological and political defeat. The image of America will never again be the image of revolution, freedom and democracy, but the image of violence and militarism."

If we continue, there will be no doubt in my mind and in the mind of the world that we have no honorable intentions in Vietnam. It will become clear that our minimal expectation is to occupy it as an American colony and men will not refrain from thinking that our maximum hope is to goad China into a war so that we may bomb her nuclear installations. If we do not stop our war against the people of Vietnam immediately the world will be left with no other alternative than to see this as some horribly clumsy and deadly game we have decided to play.

The world now demands a maturity of America that we may not be able to achieve. It demands that we admit that we have been wrong from the beginning of our adventure in Vietnam, that we have been detrimental to the life of the Vietnamese people. The situation is one in which we must be ready to turn sharply from our present ways.

In order to atone for our sins and errors in Vietnam, we should take the initiative in bringing a halt to this tragic war. I would like to suggest five concrete things that our government should do immediately to begin the long and difficult process of extricating ourselves from this nightmarish conflict:


End all bombing in North and South Vietnam.
Declare a unilateral cease-fire in the hope that such action will create the atmosphere for negotiation.
Take immediate steps to prevent other battlegrounds in Southeast Asia by curtailing our military buildup in Thailand and our interference in Laos.
Realistically accept the fact that the National Liberation Front has substantial support in South Vietnam and must thereby play a role in any meaningful negotiations and in any future Vietnam government.
Set a date that we will remove all foreign troops from Vietnam in accordance with the 1954 Geneva agreement.

Part of our ongoing commitment might well express itself in an offer to grant asylum to any Vietnamese who fears for his life under a new regime which included the Liberation Front. Then we must make what reparations we can for the damage we have done. We most provide the medical aid that is badly needed, making it available in this country if necessary.

Protesting The War
Meanwhile we in the churches and synagogues have a continuing task while we urge our government to disengage itself from a disgraceful commitment. We must continue to raise our voices if our nation persists in its perverse ways in Vietnam. We must be prepared to match actions with words by seeking out every creative means of protest possible.

As we counsel young men concerning military service we must clarify for them our nation's role in Vietnam and challenge them with the alternative of conscientious objection. I am pleased to say that this is the path now being chosen by more than seventy students at my own alma mater, Morehouse College, and I recommend it to all who find the American course in Vietnam a dishonorable and unjust one. Moreover I would encourage all ministers of draft age to give up their ministerial exemptions and seek status as conscientious objectors. These are the times for real choices and not false ones. We are at the moment when our lives must be placed on the line if our nation is to survive its own folly. Every man of humane convictions must decide on the protest that best suits his convictions, but we must all protest.

There is something seductively tempting about stopping there and sending us all off on what in some circles has become a popular crusade against the war in Vietnam. I say we must enter the struggle, but I wish to go on now to say something even more disturbing. The war in Vietnam is but a symptom of a far deeper malady within the American spirit, and if we ignore this sobering reality we will find ourselves organizing clergy- and laymen-concerned committees for the next generation. They will be concerned about Guatemala and Peru. They will be concerned about Thailand and Cambodia. They will be concerned about Mozambique and South Africa. We will be marching for these and a dozen other names and attending rallies without end unless there is a significant and profound change in American life and policy. Such thoughts take us beyond Vietnam, but not beyond our calling as sons of the living God.

In 1957 a sensitive American official overseas said that it seemed to him that our nation was on the wrong side of a world revolution. During the past ten years we have seen emerge a pattern of suppression which now has justified the presence of U.S. military "advisors" in Venezuela. This need to maintain social stability for our investments accounts for the counter-revolutionary action of American forces in Guatemala. It tells why American helicopters are being used against guerrillas in Colombia and why American napalm and green beret forces have already been active against rebels in Peru. It is with such activity in mind that the words of the late John F. Kennedy come back to haunt us. Five years ago he said, "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable."

Increasingly, by choice or by accident, this is the role our nation has taken -- the role of those who make peaceful revolution impossible by refusing to give up the privileges and the pleasures that come from the immense profits of overseas investment.

I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a "thing-oriented" society to a "person-oriented" society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.

A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies. n the one hand we are called to play the good Samaritan on life's roadside; but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life's highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it is not haphazard and superficial. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say: "This is not just." It will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of Latin America and say: "This is not just." The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just. A true revolution of values will lay hands on the world order and say of war: "This way of settling differences is not just." This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation's homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into veins of people normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.

America, the richest and most powerful nation in the world, can well lead the way in this revolution of values. There is nothing, except a tragic death wish, to prevent us from reordering our priorities, so that the pursuit of peace will take precedence over the pursuit of war. There is nothing to keep us from molding a recalcitrant status quo with bruised hands until we have fashioned it into a brotherhood.

This kind of positive revolution of values is our best defense against communism. War is not the answer. Communism will never be defeated by the use of atomic bombs or nuclear weapons. Let us not join those who shout war and through their misguided passions urge the United States to relinquish its participation in the United Nations. These are days which demand wise restraint and calm reasonableness. We must not call everyone a Communist or an appeaser who advocates the seating of Red China in the United Nations and who recognizes that hate and hysteria are not the final answers to the problem of these turbulent days. We must not engage in a negative anti-communism, but rather in a positive thrust for democracy, realizing that our greatest defense against communism is to take offensive action in behalf of justice. We must with positive action seek to remove thosse conditions of poverty, insecurity and injustice which are the fertile soil in which the seed of communism grows and develops.

The People Are Important
These are revolutionary times. All over the globe men are revolting against old systems of exploitation and oppression and out of the wombs of a frail world new systems of justice and equality are being born. The shirtless and barefoot people of the land are rising up as never before. "The people who sat in darkness have seen a great light." We in the West must support these revolutions. It is a sad fact that, because of comfort, complacency, a morbid fear of communism, and our proneness to adjust to injustice, the Western nations that initiated so much of the revolutionary spirit of the modern world have now become the arch anti-revolutionaries. This has driven many to feel that only Marxism has the revolutionary spirit. Therefore, communism is a judgement against our failure to make democracy real and follow through on the revolutions we initiated. Our only hope today lies in our ability to recapture the revolutionary spirit and go out into a sometimes hostile world declaring eternal hostility to poverty, racism, and militarism. With this powerful commitment we shall boldly challenge the status quo and unjust mores and thereby speed the day when "every valley shall be exalted, and every moutain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall be made straight and the rough places plain."

A genuine revolution of values means in the final analysis that our loyalties must become ecumenical rather than sectional. Every nation must now develop an overriding loyalty to mankind as a whole in order to preserve the best in their individual societies.

This call for a world-wide fellowship that lifts neighborly concern beyond one's tribe, race, class and nation is in reality a call for an all-embracing and unconditional love for all men. This oft misunderstood and misinterpreted concept -- so readily dismissed by the Nietzsches of the world as a weak and cowardly force -- has now become an absolute necessity for the survival of man. When I speak of love I am not speaking of some sentimental and weak response. I am speaking of that force which all of the great religions have seen as the supreme unifying principle of life. Love is somehow the key that unlocks the door which leads to ultimate reality. This Hindu-Moslem-Christian-Jewish-Buddhist belief about ultimate reality is beautifully summed up in the first epistle of Saint John:

Let us love one another; for love is God and everyone that loveth is born of God and knoweth God. He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love. If we love one another God dwelleth in us, and his love is perfected in us.

Let us hope that this spirit will become the order of the day. We can no longer afford to worship the god of hate or bow before the altar of retaliation. The oceans of history are made turbulent by the ever-rising tides of hate. History is cluttered with the wreckage of nations and individuals that pursued this self-defeating path of hate. As Arnold Toynbee says : "Love is the ultimate force that makes for the saving choice of life and good against the damning choice of death and evil. Therefore the first hope in our inventory must be the hope that love is going to have the last word."

We are now faced with the fact that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. In this unfolding conundrum of life and history there is such a thing as being too late. Procrastination is still the thief of time. Life often leaves us standing bare, naked and dejected with a lost opportunity. The "tide in the affairs of men" does not remain at the flood; it ebbs. We may cry out deperately for time to pause in her passage, but time is deaf to every plea and rushes on. Over the bleached bones and jumbled residue of numerous civilizations are written the pathetic words: "Too late." There is an invisible book of life that faithfully records our vigilance or our neglect. "The moving finger writes, and having writ moves on..." We still have a choice today; nonviolent coexistence or violent co-annihilation.

We must move past indecision to action. We must find new ways to speak for peace in Vietnam and justice throughout the developing world -- a world that borders on our doors. If we do not act we shall surely be dragged down the long dark and shameful corridors of time reserved for those who possess power without compassion, might without morality, and strength without sight.

Now let us begin. Now let us rededicate ourselves to the long and bitter -- but beautiful -- struggle for a new world. This is the callling of the sons of God, and our brothers wait eagerly for our response. Shall we say the odds are too great? Shall we tell them the struggle is too hard? Will our message be that the forces of American life militate against their arrival as full men, and we send our deepest regrets? Or will there be another message, of longing, of hope, of solidarity with their yearnings, of commitment to their cause, whatever the cost? The choice is ours, and though we might prefer it otherwise we must choose in this crucial moment of human history.

As that noble bard of yesterday, James Russell Lowell, eloquently stated:

Once to every man and nation
Comes the moment to decide,
In the strife of truth and falsehood,
For the good or evil side;
Some great cause, God's new Messiah,
Off'ring each the bloom or blight,
And the choice goes by forever
Twixt that darkness and that light.

Though the cause of evil prosper,
Yet 'tis truth alone is strong;
Though her portion be the scaffold,
And upon the throne be wrong:
Yet that scaffold sways the future,
And behind the dim unknown,
Standeth God within the shadow
Keeping watch above his own.

Sympathy for the W

A song for the outgoing administration, in Bush's voice. Didn't even have to change all that many words. I think you know the tune.

Please allow me to introduce myself
I'm a man of wealth and haste
I've been around for a long eight years
sent many a soldiers' soul to waste

I wasn't round during 911
for our moment of doubt and pain
Made damn sure that Patriot Act
took our rights Gitmo stained our name

Pleased to meet you
Don't misremember my name
But whats puzzling you
Is the language of my game


Started a war in Baghdad
When I saw it was a time for a change
Killed Saddam and his Generals
in Abu Gharib, they screamed in pain
I wore a suit on a carrier plank
said "Mission Accomplished" while the bodies stank


Pleased to meet you
Don't misremember my name
Ah, whats puzzling you
Is the science in my game


I watched in shame
when Katrina came while New Orleans screamed in pain
I shouted out,
Where were the WMD's?
When after all
They were Dick and me


Let me please introduce myself
I'm a man of wealth and waste
I laid traps for Democrats
Who's bills I veto every day


Pleased to meet you
Don't misremember my name
But whats puzzling you
Is the failure of my game

Just as every immigrant's a criminal
And all right wingers saints
So like Poppy
Just call me Junior
cause I'm in need of some restraint


So if you meet me
Have some courtesy
Don't throw shoes at my face
Attorneys, support my policies
Or Alberto'll lay your jobs to waste

Pleased to meet you
Don't misrember my name, um yeah
But whats puzzling you
Is the thinking in my game

Tell me Rummy, whats my name
Tell me Condi, can ya guess my name
Tell me Wolfie, whats my name
I won't say it, but I'm to blame

Obama and Progressive Expections

Since the election, I've heard frustration from a lot of progressives, both on this forum and off, with President-Elect Obama. They feel Obama is not addressing the concerns of the progressive community. In some ways I share those frustrations. Like many progressives, I have large disagreements with Obama on health care, on tax structure, on fiscal policy, and on foreign policy. I am a strong proponent of marriage equality, and am disappointed by Obama's stance on this issue. He has chosen a relatively centrist cabinet with many Clinton (and one Bush) holdovers.

I knew his positions and expected his centrist cabinet choices when I canvassed and phoned for Obama this summer and fall. I knew these things when I cried election night. I will know these things when I cry during his inauguration, and I will know these things when I enthusiastically support his campaign in 2012.

Many progressives believe, because they devoted so much time and energy to the Obama campaign, that Obama should govern in a progressive manner. I have/had no such expectations. I have hopes. I think Obama has a chance to pass some bold regulation, and chart new territory for energy policy and infrastructure investment. I think that Obama has a chance to restore rule of law and a spirit of international cooperation with other nations. I don't realistically believe that Obama will (or can) implement a progressive agenda. In 2008, that's a progressive pipe dream.

But progressive pipe dreams can come true. In 1970, the year I was born, it was a pipe dream that a black man could become president. It was a pipe dream that gays and lesbians could be married in any state, let alone two neighboring ones. Those things didn't happen by accident, they happened because people made it happen, with their sweat, their tears, and their blood. So today's pipe dreams; economic justice, universal health care, fair tax policy, and the humanization of all people, may not happen in 2012, but 2040 isn't so far away.

I view President Obama as a link in that chain to make the today's pipe dreams tomorrow's reality, just as this election is the realization of yesterday's pipe dreams. I expect Obama to listen to progressives, to hear OUR voices, and be supportive when we transform our vision of the world into enactable policy. I expect him to articulate a vision of the United States that includes progressive values. I have great hope that he will do these things, and they will bear fruits in the years to come.

We progressives need to realize that NO president, is going to enact the policies we want to see enacted......today. There is no easy. There is no saviour. There is no magic button. Just our blood, sweat, and tears, and hopefully a president who will listen closely when we are loud enough and true enough and strong enough.

More on freedom

This is a great exchange about terrorism and freedom between Bill Maher and Andrew Sullivan from Real Time with Bill Maher last September. Although I have huge, gaping disagreements with both Maher (religion) and Sullivan (role of the state) I have the upmost respect for their refreshing intellectual honesty and curiosity. Maher is my favorite comedian, and if there were only one national blog I could read, it would be the Daily Dish by Andrew Sullivan, because it both nourishes and challenges.

The Price of Freedom

This is a comment I left on rifuture.org to a suggestion that Starbucks check everyone's ID who enters. On New Year's Eve, someone set off a homemade bomb at the starbucks on Thayer St., Providence, RI;


The price we pay to live in a free society is that we are not able (or willing) to secure the safety of every person at all costs. If we could, we would make cars illegal, make alcohol illegal, make smoking illegal, and make anyone who goes anywhere go through a strip search. We should take precautions, but we've allowed ourselves to live in fear. I'm willing to take the risk that there is a one in a 5 million chance that I die in a terrorist attack just as I'm willing to take the far, far greater risk of getting into a fatal car accident every time I get behind the wheel of a car. We have already given up too many of our freedoms as a result of our fears. On one terrible day, 7 years ago, 4 of the 6000 planes (or .067%) in the air were hijacked by terrorists, which resulted in a terrible loss of 3000 lives (about the same amount of people that Russia lost daily during WWII), but our individual liberties and our society's freedom is worth far more than that.

The Wyatt Detention Facility

I formed a group of facebook about the Wyatt Detention Facility. Here is the url (having problems with a link):

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=42210608682&ref=mf#/group.php?gid=42210608682

Wyatt is a private detention facility that houses immigration detainees. It has economically exploited and caused fear in the Central Falls community. We cannot afford to live in a society that offers such a dystopian institution.

The joys of the American health care system

This morning, I went to a private medical treatment center for my elbow, which had a small radial fracture. I should have gone 2-3 days ago, but I waited till today because I didn't want to spend the rest of my deductable from last year, and then spend it again for this year. Granted, it was my choice to wait 2 days and suffer a little discomfort rather than spend an extra $150, but for many, it's not a choice, it's an economic necessity.

While I was waiting to be seen, a women came into the center with her elderly parents for shingles shots. Her parents had medicare and medicaid. She was told that the shots were not covered by medicare, and she would have to pay $265 for each parent, no, wait, $300 after a nebulous "medicare visitaion fee" was added. The woman and her parents seemed distraught. She had been assured the shots would be covered.

While I was checking in, another woman came in. Her private medical insurance denied partial payment for her visit, and she now owed over $500, which she did not have. She was very distraught and angry. The woman at the desk told me that she thought it was awful the insurance company didn't pay, but that there was nothing she could do.

These are the choices we have in a profits driven health care. Do I spend two days in pain and discomfort or pay an extra $150? Do I pay $600 for my parents to get necessary shots or hold my breath and hope they don't get shingles this year. Will the woman who owes $500 get treatment the next time a health concern comes up? Are these the questions we want people asking about their health?

One year in 40 seconds

Images snapped at the same spot through one year. Showing the seasons change. The audio is actual recordings from the same spot. The images are from 2008.



Happy New Year everyone!