GBPSR member Philip Lederer writes today on the linkage between the Poor People's Campaign and nuclear disarmament.   At the end I attach my own report on the Poor People's Campaign rally in Boston last week.

https://www.commondreams.org/views/2017/10/25/poor-peoples-campaign-and-2017-nobel-peace-prize-national-call-moral-revival

Published on

Wednesday, October 25, 2017

by

Common Dreams

The Poor People’s Campaign and the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize: A National Call for a Moral Revival

Instead of catastrophic nuclear weapons and unwinnable wars, let's invest in schools, poverty, affordable housing, job training, environmental destruction and healthcare for all.

by

Philip Lederer MD

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The Costs of War project at Brown University documented that the U.S. federal government has spent or obligated $4.8 trillion dollars on wars in the Middle East. Most Americans are not aware of that enormous waste of money and human lives. Professor Andrew Bacevich has argued that our military is on autopilot and these foreign wars are not putting Americans first. ( Photo: Courtesy of Author)

The mass meeting at Boston’s historic Trinity Church on October 19 was packed with men, women, and children, rich and poor, of all races and ethnicities.

The jazz band warmed up, a piano, bass guitar, and drums. And we sang, call and response:

Woke up this morning with my mind stayed on freedom
I said I woke up this morning with my mind stayed on freedom
Well I woke up this morning with my mind stayed on freedom
Hallelu, hallelu, Hallelu, Hallelu, hallelujah

The moral revival signaled the kickoff of a modern civil rights movement and launch of a new Poor People’s Campaign. We were revitalizing what the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. had started before his assassination.

In the 1960’s, Dr. King had surprised many by adding opposition to the Vietnam War to the civil rights campaign he was leading. The same linkage of struggle on behalf of the poor, with opposition to militarism, is now a logical path.

Reverends Liz Theoharis and William J. Barber II, leaders of the Poor People’s Campaign, took the stage at Trinity Church and both spoke with a prophetic fire. We must challenge systemic racism, poverty, voter suppression, environmental destruction, and militarism, they argued. Wars increase social upheaval and hurt the poor. Instead, invest in schools, affordable housing, job training, and healthcare for all.

But how to finance the Poor People’s Campaign?

The answer is simple.

The Costs of War project at Brown University documented that the U.S. federal government has spent or obligated $4.8 trillion dollars on wars in the Middle East. Most Americans are not aware of that enormous waste of money and human lives. Professor Andrew Bacevich has argued that our military is on autopilot and these foreign wars are not putting Americans first.

But what part of the military budget should be cut first?

Nuclear weapons.

The 2017 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded on October 6 to the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, or ICAN, a coalition of nongovernmental organizations in more than 100 countries. ICAN received the Nobel Prize for their work supporting a new nuclear ban treaty. 

I am a practicing doctor, and my organization, Physicians for Social Responsibility, emphasizes the humanitarian consequences of nuclear war. Health professionals argue that the complete abolition of nuclear weapons is the only cure to the grave threat that these weapons represent.

How much money would the adoption of the nuclear ban treaty save? America’s annual expenditure on nuclear weapons is approximately $60 billion dollars. That money could help fix our struggling schools and broken social safety net.

A grassroots nonviolent protest movement linking the Poor People’s Campaign and abolition of nuclear weapons is desperately needed. Such a movement should be led by the poor and working class. In the 1960s, Ella Baker, co-founder of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, stated, “Strong people don’t need strong leaders.”

At Trinity Church, Reverend Barber brought us to our feet, with the words of Amos 5:16. Go out into the streets and lament loudly. Get everyone who is willing to fill up the malls and shops with cries of doom. Empty the stores, offices, workplaces, and enlist everybody in a general cry. When I hear you crying in the streets, then I’ll help you.

Join the Poor People’s Campaign. Sing for freedom, for an end to nuclear weapons, for peace and social justice. For all our children.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License

Philip Lederer MD is an infectious diseases doctor, former CDC disease detective, writer, fiddler/violinist, runner, and Dad.

Cole's report:

The Poor People's Campaign event featuring Rev William Barber last night was a significant gathering of the Boston area movement.   Trinity Church was not quite full and there was overflow seating in Old South.

There are four primary planks:

1) End poverty

2) End systemic racism

3) End climate disaster

4) End the war economy

Rev. Liz Theoharis, a young white minister from NYC, is Rev  Barber's co-chair for the campaign.  Both she and Rev Barber listed the same four themes in the same order, which says to me that this is a consciously constructed agenda, one that they are probably repeating in their current tour of 30 or so cities.  So already, we know that the Poor People's Campaign is reaching out on one of our core issues and that we will want to work as closely with them as possible!

Barber spoke at much greater length and with many facts, statistics, and historical perspective, including much about Boston and Massachusetts, and he also also spoke with passion; conceivably, the facts and historical dimension reflected his assessment, no doubt correct if so, about how to appeal to a largely white, educated audience that might be more represented in Boston than in other stops on their tour.   He gave a substantial amount of time to the war economy segment, but devoted most of it to a refutation of Gen. Kelly's remarks in his press conference the same day about Trump's call with Myeshia Johnson -- certainly a timely topic, but he did not address specific peace issues such as Syria, Yemen, Afghanistan, Korea, or nuclear weapons in any depth.  He did mention once to condemn Trump's "reckless talk about Korea".  He did have quite a few statistics about military spending.  "54% of the discretionary budget goes to the military - that's immoral!" he shouted, and the crowd responded ecstatically.  

He condemned so-called conservative Christians as heretics because they emphasize individualism rather than helping your neighbor, a point I've heard him make a greater length on other occasions and which I'm not qualified to assess theologically, but it's notable in the degree of polarization he proposes on this issue.

He and Theoharis both laid out their goal of a 30-city civil disobedience campaign starting on Mother's Day 2018 with 1000 people per city and 2500 in Washington, DC, that would go on for 40 days.  So look for more work to solidify that objective in the months to come.

Rev. Mariama Hammond, the leader of the Moral Movement in Boston, also spoke. 

Several progressive organizations had group delegations seated in the front with large signs; they included SEIU and JWJ and maybe a couple of others.  Four local low-income workers came up together and spoke about their personal challenges with jobs, income, health care, and the like, and perhaps these organizations recruited them - that is one possible role they might have played, though this was not otherwise explained.

-- 

Cole Harrison

Executive Director

Massachusetts Peace Action

11 Garden St, Cambridge, MA 02138

w: 617-354-2169

m: 617-466-9274

f: /masspeaceaction  t: @masspeaceaction

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