JUSTICE AND NONVIOLENCE IN THE GLOBAL COMMUNITY
by Rev. James M. Lawson, Jr.

Plenary Address to the CTA National Conference Nov. 9 in Milwaukee
I am honored to address Call To Action. I join you in your commitment to peace and justice, and your commitment to the reform of Christendom. In fact, unless we Protestants and Catholics in the 21st century reform our own houses, Christianity will have a massive demise, we will subvert the gospel of Jesus, and we will vanquish God’s effort to have the human race achieve the levels of humanity and hope that God still holds out for all of us.

Unprecedented in human history, in the year 2003, as Bush and company with corporate and bipartisan partners promoted war against Iraq, millions of people in 150 countries around the world took to the streets and cried, NO TO WAR. Voices rang with the pathos of a profound human awareness that life means more than hatred or violence. Millions, perhaps billions, of human hearts all around the world are persuaded inwardly that life is meant for more than what we have made of the 21st century. Life is about truth and compassion. Life-giving activity. Life-creating possibilities.

This march of millions is a phenomenon unmatched in either ancient or modern history. I wonder if we even realize how distinctive this year 2003 has been. In spite of the Cold War spitting out enmity and artificial conflict and division? in spite of the IMF and the World Bank, and plantation capitalism organizing around largely white male supremacy and domination? in spite of our own government arming the earth with weapons, engineering landmines in hapless villages, undermining self-determination and impulses for liberty and justice? in spite of our own government in the 1980s calling Nelson Mandela a traitor to apartheid government and a man who should be hung? in spite of our own government speaking peace while waging covert war, low intensity warfare in Asia, Africa and Central and Latin America, waging war even in our own streets? in spite of the spiritual forces of wickedness that all that represents, nevertheless billions of human beings of every culture and class and color and language, billions of people largely invisible to the plantation bosses and unheard by the robber baron companies which dictate economic action today, unfelt by the Tony Blairs of the day, billions of people like ourselves yearn for a human family of wonder and grace, where babies are given access to what in the black tradition we call the tree of life. Where excess food is stored in the bodies of the hungry of all conditions. Where the earth’s human and material resources are invested in the struggle against manmade disease and fear.

2003: A Kairos Year
We must not underestimate the immensity of the kairos of the year 2003. Millions demonstrated their acute desire, not for war but for justice and peace, not for hatred but for human solidarity, not for fear but for every family and every human to be able, in the words of Micah, to dwell under their own fig tree, unafraid. How tragic it is that in this kairotic year of grace, George Bush and the George Bushes of our world could only cry: war is peace, and peace is war.

Jesus in the New Testament speaks of the only unforgivable sin. Theologians tell us that the sin is not knowing when you have been touched by the Holy Spirit, calling truth lies and peace war, calling beauty ugliness, not being able to discern where the wave of the Spirit is uncovering the only hope for human life. Resounding across the universe I hear the voice of Jesus weeping. “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, would that even today you had only recognized the things that make for peace, but now they are hidden from your eyes. For you did not know the time of your visitation from God.”
The war on Iraq is not a preemptive war. The war on Iraq is a war of aggression. By international law and by moral and ethical understanding, it was and is a war of aggression, with little difference from the march of Hitler into Poland, the march of Japan into Manchuria, or the march of Saddam into Kuwait.

In marches and planning meetings, workshops on nonviolence and on recruiting more people into our demonstrations in Los Angeles after 9/11 and prior to the war on Iraq, I kept saying what I felt was clear: we could not stop the war. Many people disagreed with me. But I wasn’t being perverse. It was a realism about our nation and our times that we had to recognize. No matter how much we wish to criticize others, over the last 60 years we peacemakers and peace churches have largely failed. I say this with grief. In spite of our smaller successes, our country has systematically become a national security state with a budget of $800 billion designed for jobs but also for the profit of the robber barons in our land. Peace in the United States has failed.

The World’s Policeman
We are now a superpower. We became one in World War II. And huge numbers are persuaded that we are the world’s policeman--meaning that we move our 800 military installations and our 100 military missions around the world on behalf of plantation capitalism. Wherever the big business bosses want advantage and profit, privatization and domination, our resources go to make it happen--in Bolivia or Tanzania or Iraq.

We must not be naïve. It’s not only Pat Robertson who takes this position. On ABC radio in Los Angeles, Dennis Praeger, a Ph.D. in philosophy and ethics, a teacher and an orthodox Jew who parades his spirituality, speaks assiduously for the notion that America is the light of the world, and the world needs a policeman. This may be an unwelcome task, he says, but this is the primary work of the United States. Many people, perhaps even some in our own congregations, take that posture.

I speak as one who as a Jesus follower has criticized every war since World War II. I spent 13 months in federal prison in 1951-52. In trying to follow Jesus I came to the conclusion that I could not put on a military uniform and go anywhere in the world shooting other people. I had no idea in elementary and high school that as I felt the nudges of God pushing me to be a disciple of Jesus, I would become a prisoner of conscience in the land that I love.

Gandhi and nonviolence
For 50 years I have taught a nonviolent Jesus. Jesus is the source of my spiritual development. In 1947 I began to read Gandhi. I discovered that the spirituality Jesus very clearly called for in the Gospels was given feet and flesh by Gandhi, was given definition and methodology. Gandhi helped us understand that the force he was experimenting with in South Africa and India was a force more powerful than anything else in human history.

I taught nonviolence in as many different ways as I could. So I speak with some degree of grief when I say that we in the U.S. have failed as peacemakers.

Some commentators have noted how uncivil discussion has become in this country. And certain kinds of political activists believe very firmly that the way they come to power is by telling lies. In recent weeks commentators have lamented that George Bush is being hated by the American people. They should go back just a few years and remember the outpouring of hatred for Bill Clinton for the slightest things. Not that Clinton was any paragon of what a president should be. But the hatred is a direct result of our nation’s continued refusal to deal with its anti-Semitism, its racism, its sexism, its violence.

Many black leaders like to emphasize the physical stress and harassment and hurt of racism. But there is a spiritual manifestation of racism. Many of us Americans see ourselves as the examples of human life and then look down upon other people as less than human. The effect of sexism is that we males, in asserting ourselves as the dominant species, then determine that over half of the human population is not worthy of equality, justice and liberty, and the right to be moral agents on their own. Sisters and brothers, when we settled these shores and then committed genocide on nearly 25 million Native Americans who were here before us, the spiritual effect we inherit is to think that violence is right, and that there are people who deserve to die at our hands. If this is a spiritual world and if God is God, we need to understand that all of us have inherited a history of racism and sexism, violence and greed. The spiritual result is that we do not accept our own humanity, and refuse to accept the humanity of one another.

You and I have not done enough as peacemakers to obliterate that spiritual force of wickedness that has captured the hearts and minds of too many of our fellow citizens.

Another reason we have failed is that the war machine dinosaur is making war on us. It’s a war against our becoming a land where we the people actually govern ourselves, where local, state and national governments represent justice and domestic tranquility, liberty and equality, so that every boy and every girl have real access to the gifts of life. President Eisenhower reminded us that every bomb made robs the children, robs us of health care, robs the seniors of retirement security. Not only is that still the case. The war machine represents a covert crime against our humanity on these shores.
What have we become as a land when we have in our prisons more than two million people? When in jails and parole offices and other legal processes, three to five million people are involved annually. Most of these people are poor or young or people of color. What is that but a way to control the young, to prevent them from getting education and jobs and stability, raising families that will move the society away from domination and towards hope and equality.

Christianity must stop blessing violence and war in all their seductive masks - period!

If we are against war, we must be against violence in any form. Domestic violence. Violence against women. Hate crimes. The growing violence against gay and lesbian people in our land, fostered so often by us in the church! As Mel White of Soulforce, a speaker at this convention, has said, the teaching of Christians about gay and lesbian people is directly related to the rapid rise in assault, murder and intimidation of gay and lesbian people.

Let me share my analysis. People like James Kennedy, Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell were ardent segregationists in the 1960s. They proclaimed that the Bible taught the necessity of segregation between white and black people in America. They used Noah’s curse on his son Ham as the basis for asserting that the Bible decreed that I am an inferior human being. Now the King movement in the 1950s and 1960s forced Falwell and Robertson to stop using that Bible text, and to stop using pejorative, racist language in their church, writings and public appearances. The use of such terms became very unpopular. But, part of the spiritual tragedy, their Christianity is rooted in the notion that because I have been saved, you have not been saved. Do you know any Christians like that? Of course. We all do.

Your self-identity comes by the grace of God. You know your own name by God’s grace. You know that you belong, that your life is meant to be. So you will never find personal security by putting down someone else. Can’t be done. But it’s my contention that Jerry and Pat and others like them searched the Bible for a new scapegoat. They need a scapegoat. So, for the last 20-30 years, certain radio and TV shows are filled with disdain for some of our sons and daughters.

Christianity must reform itself. To preach and teach disdain against any people anywhere in the world violates Jesus as the Word made flesh, and preaches an idolatrous religion that must create instability.

Poverty: structural violence
But remember what Mahatma Gandhi said: poverty is the worst violence. We are constantly bombarded with media that point us to behavioral violence. On the evening news, if it bleeds, it leads. But that is not the worst violence. Paul Furfey, who was president both of the Catholic Sociological Association and the American Sociological Association, wrote a book in 1966 called “The Respectable Murderers.” In that book he said that the real killing in the world is not the violence we see in the newspapers. The real killing goes on from the structural, systemic violence. Poverty, racism and sexism kill by the tens of thousands every day. So, for example, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank have been responsible, systematically for the last 30 years, for the number of babies around the world who die in the first year of life radically escalating to the point where today it is 40,000 a day!

Even in our own country, 200 babies born each day will die in the first year of life. It is a national health disaster. And the pediatricians could stop it tomorrow. They know how. But our society, preoccupied with profits rather than health care, will not allow them to stop it. James Galloway, retired from Harvard Medical School, tells us in his little book, “Violence,” that those babies die, not, as George Will suggests, because of the neglect of a father or a mother. The pregnant woman, says Galloway, who may be at her very best as a mother, is caught in decisions that she does not make because of this health epidemic in the U.S. That is structural violence, more painful and invisible than the Iraq war. The babies who died in Iraq under the sanctions of the 1990s far, far outnumber the casualties of war.

Reviving the King movement
We who are peacemakers must reconstitute ourselves and the peace movement. My model is the King movement of the 1950s and 1960s. Why? Let me suggest three reasons.

1. We conscientiously called ourselves and our nation to a nonviolent spiritual and political reorganizing of our lives. We did this without apology.

2. Because our strategies put tens of thousands of people in the streets and demonstrations in all 50 states, we managed to put a civilian agenda on the minds of governors and legislature, the presidents and the Congress. Martin King called this the coalition of conscience, Millions from all walks of life--church people, civic groups, unions, political groups, university and college groups, students in sizeable numbers--captured the attention of Congress and the presidents, and said: this is the issue we ought to be dealing with. They changed the agenda! King would later call it a shining moment of hope.

Medicare was passed--against the opposition of pharmaceutical companies, medical groups, and many political leaders. Until recently, Medicare has been the most effective governmental program of any nation anywhere. Now forces like the HMOs want to privatize it, and for people like me the fees are doubling every few years. But in the New England Journal of Medicine recently, thousands of doctors called for a universal health care program for all Americans, based upon what Medicare started!

The King movement captured the attention of presidents. They didn’t like it! Read Arthur Schlesinger’s powerful book, “Robert F. Kennedy and His Times.” It describes the anguish of Robert and John Kennedy as they wrestled with this movement, brand new to the nation and to their political consciousness. On the other hand, as they wrestled with it, they saw their own spirituality and devotion change! They were being changed! I saw that myself in Robert Kennedy because I represented the Freedom Ride in 1961 and met with him two or three times that year. Across the land an intangible yet powerful spirituality said: it is time for us to address these issues that affect the well-being of our own people.

We must do that again!

The Beloved Community
3. Thirdly, the movement was more than a civil rights movement. That’s the term that history applies to it. But we talked about the Beloved Community. For many of us in the South, that phrase represented the way we understood God’s will being done on earth as it is in heaven. Or the Kingdom of God that Jesus talked about. Or a new earth that vision for ourselves that the Scriptures described. We called it the Beloved Community. We insisted on dismantling segregation and racism, sexism, violence and poverty, plantation capitalism. We insisted that our nation could have a different set of budgets. A different set of political policies that would feed, nurture and enhance human life all across the nation. We insisted the government is supposed to be about the well-being of the people, not the corporations.
Somehow, you and I who are concerned for peace, all of us who have been marching this year, must find a way to reconstitute ourselves. For example, in the streets of Los Angeles we call for health care, not warfare. We call for jobs and education. We call for transportation that allows our nation to rid itself of toxic pollution and create a healthier land.
Sisters and brothers, this is possible. A different world, a different nation is possible. The key to peace in our world is not in the Middle East, but in Washington and Los Angeles and Milwaukee and rural America. It’s our responsibility to become, not the policeman of the earth, but the justice and peace community of the earth that can show the human race that we are one.
It is Pope Paul who said that we human beings are all in the same boat, and that a hole in the boat sinks the whole boat, the bow as well as the stern.
In Bolivia this year ordinary indigenous people and union leaders have organized massive protests against neo-liberalism, plantation capitalism, and the American businesses that are trying to privatize water and other resources, trying to privatize natural gas and ship it to the U.S. and Europe rather than allowing the people to use it for themselves. In the last six weeks, they forced the elected president of Bolivia to flee into exile in Miami. Grassroots organizations in villages and communities are demanding a new leadership and political understanding where they take charge of their own development and raise themselves up rather than feed the coffers of the West.

Freedom Ride 2003
We have wonderful models right here in the United States. We in the peace movement must learn from those models, and begin to see how we can so upset the status quo that we seize the attention of elected officials and business alike. Recently one of the finest nonviolent demonstrations our nation has ever seen was the Immigrant Workers’ Freedom Ride 2003! I came a few weeks ago to greet the freedom riders here in Milwaukee. It was the most elaborately planned demonstration ever. Buses from ten cities moved across the country, touching base with a hundred different communities, stopping at various historical sites to celebrate struggle and liberty, then converging on Washington and finally on New York Oct. 4. It was the most multiracial, multicredal, multicultural, multi-language, multi-country demonstration--over 100,000 of us. Some of us tried to call the peace people in New York and say to them: Look! The Immigrant Workers’ Freedom Riders will be in New York at 10 a.m. in Flushing Meadows. Why don’t you call out the troops, and let this be a half million demonstrators, or a million, and identify the peace movement with the justice movement and with the hopes of immigrant workers in this country!

The future of peace in the U.S. and the future of workers earning a minimum wage is the same future. The future of working families, and the future of women, and blacks, and Latinos and all of us, is the same future. We will all rise together in justice and liberty, or we will all stumble.


A question of character
Let us speak to one another. Let us mobilize ourselves, our neighbors, our congregation, our coworkers, the people in the streets. Let us displace the status quo with people of character and hope.

One of the diseases of our nation is this: tens of thousands of elected officials across the nation have the best medical plan that money can buy. Yet they do not recognize that the same medical plan should be available to every boy and girl in America. As a man of the Spirit and a preacher and pastor, I have to say: that is faulty, corrupted character. It is time for us to let our elected officials understand that we know: there is a missing link in their spirituality.

Jesus would have us know the things that make for peace. We must renew the movement in this country that disrupts the status quo of racism, sexism, violence and poverty and begins to rebuild our land in the image of God’s love. Injustice always means conflict, instability, violence and despair. A just, creative, sustainable United States is possible. It’s the only kind of nation that is possible, for the urge of the Cosmic Christ for cosmic justice is on the side of peace. Remember how in the ninth chapter of Luke, James and John wanted to use power to call down fire upon a Samaritan village that rejected Jesus. But Jesus rebuked them: You do not know of what Spirit you are. The Son of Man has come not to destroy human beings but to save them, to enhance, to make life more abundant than ever before.

If we walk in Jesus’s footsteps, then we want a peace that means living wages for everyone. Workers can be in unions they manage and control on their own behalf. Women will have equal rights and be acknowledged as moral agents by the grace of God. Segregation and racism will be dismantled. Poverty will be isolated. God wants us to have a better nation and a better world. But God waits for us to hear the promises, and to follow. Amen.