Image provided by: University of Oregon Libraries; Eugene, OR
About Eugene weekly. (Eugene, Oregon) 1993-current | View Entire Issue (Jan. 15, 2004)
BY PAUL ROCKWELL Sorrows of Empire Dr. King’s Speech on War and Peace T hirty-six years ago, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered a speech that changed my life. I was a student at Union Theological Seminary in New York city in 1967, during the peak of the Vietnam war. Almost by accident a friend in- vited me across the street to hear Dr. King deliver a comprehensive anti-war address at Riverside Church. It is not the drama, the excitement of the occasion, nor King’s mellifluous voice passing over the hushed sanctuary as he described the holo- caust of Indochina. It is not even the way history later vindicated king’s teachings on war — every- thing he predicted came to pass — that makes his 1967 address so memorable to me. It is the vitality of his teachings for our own lives, the immediate relevance to the arrogance and jingoism of our time, that compels me to recall and reread the Peacemaker’s masterpiece once again. The economic and moral crisis we are facing today — the ubiquity of violent crime, the endemic clutch of drugs, the growing poverty of the working poor, the ruin of the Bill of Rights, the suffocation of millions of decent lives in the ghettos of our cities — all date back to that fateful turn when American leaders, pressured by big corporations, chose war over peace, empire over civil rights and social progress. D r. King saw our crisis coming. “A few years ago,” he began from his well-lit pulpit, speaking in reference to America’s anti-poverty programs, “there was a shining moment in our 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 programs [become] broken. I was compelled to see the war as the enemy of the poor.” As Dr. King analyzed the hope-wrecking nature of war, I stopped taking notes and listened with my heart as he described not only the devastation abroad and the injuries and scarred lives of the working class youth returning home, but the spiritual costs of imperialism — the mendacity of our leaders, the disillusionment of youth. “A nation,” he said, “that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.” King reminded his listeners that U.S. lawlessness abroad breeds violence within the United States as well. “As I walked among the desperate, rejected, angry men, I have told them that Molotov cocktails and rifles would not solve their problems. But they ask — and rightly so — what about Vietnam? Wasn’t our own nation using massive doses of violence to solve its problems? 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 against the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today — my own government.” King never used the term “blowback,” but his mes- sage was clear. When America sows the wind, it will reap the whirlwind in due time. T he Vietnam war is past. The cold war is over. But King’s teachings about the sor- rows of empire, the moral and social costs of militarism, are as timely today as they were 36 years ago. There is still no Marshall plan for our cities, no jobs pro- gram for our youth yearning for hope and direction. The near-400 billion dollar military budget is a mockery of social justice. Americans pay more for “defense” than all poten- tial adversaries combined. According to the Congressional Budget Office, federal deficits over the next five years will hit $1.08 trillion, a military induced deficit that is robbing our children of housing, education, health care and chances for a better life. U.S. corporations now globalize weaponry and violence for profit, and the U.S. has become the primary font of arms proliferation in the world. Subsidized by American taxpayers, U.S. corporations — Lockheed-Martin, General Electric, General Dynamics, McDonnell Douglas, Boeing, Hughes Aircraft, to name a few — sell lethal weapons to more than 40 countries. Assault helicopters, tanks, 50-caliber machine guns, hellfire anti-armor missiles, land-mine dispensing pods, Stinger missiles, fighter jets, rifles, guns — mechanized violence has become the main currency of American foreign policy. U.S. companies, along with France, helped Iraq build its arsenal of poison gas and chemical weapons in the ‘80s. Dr. King once described the sale of weaponry on a world scale as one of the great social crimes of the modern age. King’s 36-year-old speech still sears my soul because my own country is still “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world.” We are all victims, in King’s words, of that “deadly western arrogance that has poisoned the international atmosphere for so long.” I left Riverside Church inspired by the intensity of the event. The following day, King’s patriotic address caused an outcry in the media. TIME magazine called it “dema- gogic slander, a script for Radio Hanoi.” Nevertheless, I can still hear our teacher reciting the words of James Russell Lowell: “Though the cause of evil prosper, yet ‘tis truth alone is strong.” Paul Rockwell (rockyspad@earthlink.net) is a writer and peace activist in Oakland, Calif. who taught constitutional law at Midwestern University. This commentary was first published Jan. 8 by CommonDreams.org 6 JANUARY 15, 2004 TO THE EDITOR UNBOUNDED COMPASSION FIELDS OF DREAMS This latest terror alert is a fire drill with live ammunition, designed to distract us from the very real mounting public awareness of our unelected regime’s lies, misdeeds, blun- ders, and real motives. The neo-f***er, con- servative (oops, almost said the “F” word, free pass to the Global Gulag) Bush adminis- tration is facing more heat from the Supreme Court, moderate Republicans (yes, Martha, there is such a thing!) and just plain Joes like you and me to domestic economic and secu- rity issues, and mounting opposition from the rest of the world toward our openly op- pressive “strip-mine-the-world” imperial policy. The solution: No problem! We’ll show those disloyal pinkos — let’s have an alert! And just for good measure, let’s throw in some media echo-chamber stories about air travel and shoulder-fired anti-aircraft mis- siles at Christmas, when millions of people travel! And fingerprint those (maybe terror- ist) foreign journalists on short visas! Plant the seed of terror in people’s minds and it will grow...talk is cheaper than Al-Qaeda in this Field of Nightmare. And, incidentally, pro- vide job security to Tom Ridge and his mil- lions of trained (?) employees. And turn the (former) U.S. into a mono- lithic police state. But, hey, they’ll count to three before they shoot. How compassionate can a conservative get? Michael Anderson Oakridge George Beres (1/8) couldn’t be more wrong about the multi-sport fields built at the four Eugene high schools. This community continues to have far fewer playing fields than it should. My daughter played soccer at South and the availability of the new artificial turf fields was a godsend for her and many young athletes in Eugene. Thousands of young people use those facilities and by play- ing right at the schools they build school spirit, too. Beres says that the kids should play football at Autzen. Playing a high school football game at Autzen with 1,000 fans tucked in a 50,000 seat stadium may be cost-effective from Beres’ perspective, but it short-changes the young people in our community. It is penny wise and pound foolish. I have noticed that Beres seems to relish writing anti-UO letters to the local media. I suspect the opportunity to criticize the UO was too much for him to resist and he dragged the high school fields in as the segue. Whatever. My hat is off to the voters in this community who showed that they care about the kids. Randy Kolb Eugene LETTERS POLICY: We print as many letters as space allows. Please limit length to 250 words and submissions to once a month. All letters are subject to editing for length and clarity, and must include address and phone number. E-mail to editor@eugeneweekly.com, fax to 484-4044, or mail to 1251 Lincoln, Eugene 97401. 1251 Lincoln St Eugene, OR 97401 541.484.0519 • (fax) 541.484.4044 on the web @ www.eugeneweekly.com OPENS THIS WEEK! EDITORIAL Editor Ted Taylor Executive/Arts Editor Lois Wadsworth News Editor Aria Seligmann Contributing Editor Anita Johnson Staff Writers Alan Pittman, Bobbie Willis Calendar Editor Jacquelyn Lewis Contributing Writers Brett Campbell, Rachel Foster, Kate Rogers Gessert, James Johnston, Mary O’Brien, Sylvie Pederson, Vanessa Salvia, Sally Sheklow, Lance Sparks, Martha Ulman West Interns Koki Smith, Karman Ratliff y ART DEPARTMENT Art Director/Production Manager Kevin Dougherty Graphic Artist/Webmaster James Bateman Graphic Artists Todd Cooper Contributing Photographer Paul Neevel ADVERTISING Director of Sales & Marketing Bill Shreve National Sales Manager Mark Frisbee Display Marketing Consultant Jennifer D’Angelo, Rob Weiss Advertising Traffic Coordinator Geneva Miller Classified Sales Manager Jeffrey Stout Classified Sales Marah Busey BUSINESS Circulation Manager Deena Miller Controller Paula Hoemann Distributors Dorothy England, Yona C. Riel, Carrie Wedmore, Pedalers Express Printing Signature Graphics HOW TO REACH US BY E-MAIL: (letters): editor@eugeneweekly.com (advertising): ads@eugeneweekly.com (classifieds): classy@eugeneweekly.com (personals): personals@eugeneweekly.com (calendar): cal@eugeneweekly.com (music/clubs/special shows): music@eugeneweekly.com (art/openings/galleries): visualarts@eugeneweekly.com (performance/theater): performance@eugeneweekly.com (literary arts/readings): books@eugeneweekly.com (movies/film screenings): movies@eugeneweekly.com (circulation): distribution@eugeneweekly.com
