Hiroshima-Nagasaki Speech In NYC Mary Beth Sullivan Global Network Aug 5th

From: "Global Network"
To: "Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power In Space"


Hiroshima-Nagasaki Speech in NYC
Tuesday, August 5
All Souls Church, New York City
By Mary Beth Sullivan

It is good, and right, and I would add, holy, that you have gathered
here tonight to remember that 63 years ago our government dropped
nuclear weapons onto the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I am
honored and grateful to be here with you.

To frame my comments, you need to know that I am a social worker.
Various jobs have introduced me to disabled children, women receiving
welfare, and homeless people. I have made eye contact with people
who have had to make a choice between eating and taking their
medications. Can you imagine that choice? In the richest nation of
the world?What´s the right answer when your question is should I use
my limited resources for food, or for the medication that helps me
manage my diabetes, or my mental illness? What I have to say tonight
is very personal for me...

I recently read "Crazy Horse: Strange Man of the Oglalas" by Mari
Sandoz.

When he needed to, Crazy Horse would go out alone into the mountains
to contemplate what was happening to his people, and to reflect on
the unusual behaviors in the people that were invading the west. He
reflected on:

o The dwindling population of that life-sustaining gift to his
people: the buffalo;

o The white man´s obsession over gold, and his willingness to take
over the sacred Black Hills to get at it;

o The white man´s willingness to kill women - and children;

o Their propensity to make promises through treaties, that they did
not keep;

o Their continuing efforts to modernize weapons, until they
controlled and dominated on the battlefield, in spite of the Indian
warrior´s skill and courage.

I admit to the despair I felt while I was reading this book. What has
changed over the last 140 or more years? We are still using nature´s
resources in an unsustainable way - with no concern for future
generations; we will still make war to control natural resources; we
are still willing to kill women, and children, and the elderly -
innocents all; we still renege on treaties...

and we are still modernizing weapons to control and dominate on any
corner of this planet that has resources we might want.

For years now, the Global Network has been making copies available of
the U.S. Space Command´s Vision for 2020. Let me read from the
introduction: "US Space Command -dominating the space dimension of
military operations to protect US interests and investment.
Integrating Space Forces into warfighting capabilities across the
full spectrum of conflict."

"Future Trends: ... The globalization of the world economy will
continue, with a widening between "haves"and "have nots"... Space
superiority is emerging as an essential element of battlefield
success and future warfare." Modern weapons. To control and
dominate...

Yesterday´s NY Times had a front page story about the many who, years
after Katrina, are still stuck - unable to create a new, independent
life for themselves. The social workers in this room, if you´ve
worked with a low-income population - you know these folks. It´s the
people who tell us: "If I didn´t have bad luck, I wouldn´t have any
luck at all!" The reporter introduced us to a few individuals with
significant issues that prevent them from "making it." In describing
one gentle man, the reported noted that he made a series of "bad
choices," -including buying a car (with money he was taking in from
the government) so that he would have access to better paying jobs.
Unfortunately, the car he bought didn´t run.

I scratched my head when I saw the "bad choices"judgment from the
reporter, as I tried to weigh this unlucky fellow´s decisions to some
others that have been made, also with American´s tax dollars. For
example:

How about the $150 billion in the research and development of Star
Wars systems? Or the creation of these systems that require tests
that cost $100 million a pop? Or the deployment of systems that have
never been tested? Is there a star wars system that was ever
developed on time and within budget? That´s not even expected
anymore.I´d say that there are some pretty expensive "bad choices"
being made there...

I´d call it a bad choice for a government to tell it´s cash cow -
oops, I mean its taxpayers - that Star Wars is about defending our
country from a nuclear attack from a rogue nation. When in truth, it
is an offensive system, and is being used to surround China and
Russia, is intended to give the U.S. global control of natural
resources. But then again, if we knew the truth, would we continue
paying our taxes??

Here´s another bad choice for you: How about the $5.5 trillion we
have spent on the development, research, construction, maintenance,
and now "modernizing" nuclear weapons in this country, while leaving
the toxic mess - and the bill to pay - to future generations?

Maybe it´s a bad choice that the Pentagon has put 750 -or is it 800?
- or could the number be as high as 1,000? - U.S. military bases in
foreign countries? I surely know that this community here in NY City
has worked hard to prevent the addition of one more military base in
the Czech Republic!!

I´m guessing that the people in this room know what the number 1
industrial export of this country is? Weapons.What a legacy...

So here is my nomination for the winner of the "bad choices" category
about which I wish some reporter somewhere would write a story. It´s
a "bad choice"that has been made over and over again, by every
president, by every congress, Republican and Democrat, since World
War II -in spite of President and General Dwight Eisenhower´s
admonition against it: We have turned our industrial base over to
the Pentagon. The Military Industrial Complex provides jobs in most
Congressional Districts, guaranteeing public support for continued
military spending. Never mind that, to keep the production lines
flowing, we need endless war! And in spite of the fact that research
shows that military production is capital intensive: One billion
dollars spent on the military creates half the jobs than if that
billion dollars were spent on building a mass transit
infrastructure. You´d get many more jobs if you took that military
money, and put it into construction for home weatherization.

Seymour Melman, the late professor at Columbia University, and the
grandfather of the movement toward economic conversion, identified
these "bad choices" twenty-five years ago. He noted that we had
created a "permanent war economy." In fact, he pointed out this
important fact:

Military operations is the largest, single, sustaining activity of
the U.S. government.

So let me tell you this story Melman reported, which perhaps some of
you know. Back in the late 1990´s, New York City´s Transit Authority
had between $3 billon and $4 billion to spend to begin replacing its
subway cars. City government put out a request for bids. Not a
single American company responded! Why? The industrial base in this
country no longer manufactures what is needed to maintain, improve,
or build our infrastructure. We don´t even have the tools anymore!
Instead, NYC contracted with companies in Japan and Canada to build
its subway cars. Melman estimated that such a contract could have
generated, directly and indirectly, about 32,000 jobs in the US.

Let me be so bold as to prescribe some "better choices"that we could
have made in this country. Do you remember that when Jimmy Carter
was president, he put solar panels on the roof over the West Wing of
the White House? And of course, what did Ronald Reagan do? He took
them off.

What if our nation had made different choices? What if the $150
billion we´ve devoted to weaponizing space had been spent on creating
alternative energy systems? Wouldn´t half the roofs in NYC have
solar panels on them today?

Back in the 1980s, Denmark made a commitment to reducing its reliance
on fossil fuels. They set a goal to have (I think) 20% of their
energy use generated by wind power by the year 2010. They have
already reached that goal, and are now attempting to double it.

In my home town of Bath Maine sits Bath Iron Works. Since the 1990s,
it has been owned by General Dynamics, and its history of making
commercial ships has given way to building naval destroyers. While
the congressional delegation in the state, both Democrat and
Republican, seek ways to guarantee twenty more years of building
naval destroyers, we are asking a simple question: Who is our naval
competitor? If US naval destroyers are being used to shock, awe,
invade and occupy another country for its oil today, what resources
will we be after in ten years? Whose resources will we need to
maintain our way of life? Whose "interests and investments" will
these destroyers, outfitted with Star Wars systems, be out there
"protecting?"

We´ve been holding signs outside BIW for years now with the message
like: Make Windmills, Not War; Conversion Produces More Jobs. They
used to laugh at us. A friend who works at BIW last week shared an
article he found: Investors are taking seriously the notion of
putting thousands of huge windmills six miles off the shores of
Maine. They need a production facility. They predict 10,000 jobs.
BIW is the only existing facility in the state large enough to manage
the size and weight of these windmills. I have no idea what will
happen at BIW - but I´m thinking they´re not laughing now...

As activists, we must continue to respond to pending wars (I´m sure
you´ve taken action against the bombing of Iran), and the current
occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan.We must stand up to resist this
violence.

But we can also choose to become the visionaries for the 21st Century.

We need to join our energies with labor and unions.Let´s speak the
truth about the consequences of a permanent war economy. Let´s share
the research about the numbers of jobs created when we replace
military jobs with jobs that will sustain life on this planet for
future generations.

We need to join with environmental activists. Sit in circles.
Share. Generate consensus to support labor in advocating for union
jobs that create an infrastructure for the 21st Century based on
clean, renewable energy.

Let´s join with faith communities, social justice committees, social
workers, health care workers. I´m tired of watching those of us who
serve the elderly be pitted against those serving children, or the
homeless, or those with mental illness, or veterans, or low-income
families... We see the ever shrinking piece of the pie we are all
expected to share as we do our work... so our advocacy becomes
fighting
to take care of one population at the expense of another. We need to
be joining forces and singing in unison: we don´t accept this
diminishing pie. We KNOW we can´t afford guns and butter - and we
KNOW that the guns are destroying us all - so Hand Over those
Military Dollars - and we will create REAL Homeland Security:

We will put our communities to work rebuilding our infrastructure;
We will build a rail system that connects communities across the
country;
We will weatherize homes;
We will research and develop systems that harness the energy from the
sun, the wind, the tides, the earth.
We will employ our communities building, installing, repairing new
energy systems.
We will have health care, homes, support for the vulnerable in our
midst.

The Pentagon has been a terribly poor steward of America´s tax
dollars. The amount of fraud, waste, abuse -outright theft! - make
it a moral imperative to intervene.

Let me close with two human stories:
I have a friend who is a navy veteran. She was 24 when she served on
an Aegis Cruiser made in Bath, Maine. It was her job to keep this
ship in position so that it could launch the first tomahawk missiles
into Iraq for the "shock and awe"bombing on March 19, 2003. Hours
later, she left the deck of the ship and went below to see images of
Baghdad burning on CNN. Images that are burned into the head and the
heart and the soul of this sweet, gentle woman.

We have damaged this young woman´s life. A civil engineer who went
to school to build bridges and roads is haunted by the full capacity
of destruction she helped unleash on a populated city. We have
failed this young woman, and this generation of young people who are
looking for meaningful, satisfying, life-sustaining jobs.

But then again... last spring I visited with a friend who lives in New
Orleans. She told us that, since Katrina, a number of high schools
have organized to send student work crews down to do some of the
physical labor of rebuilding. This year, applicants to colleges in
the area grew at a rate never before seen. I was heartened to hear
this because I believe what the people in this country want to do is
to build. To care for each other. NOT to destroy. We want our
neighbors to be safe. We were appalled by the images of how our
neighbors in New Orleans were left behind. Our young people want to
make it right. They found meaning in caring for their neighbors.
They want to recreate that feeling by being there...

We must work to create a vision. A different economy. A caring
economy. The funding source is there: it is the Military Industrial
Complex. Let´s join together to demand a conversion process that
crates meaningful jobs that are about building a collective future.

I used to wonder: If I had lived during the time when Andrew Jackson
was forcing the Cherokee off their lands through the Trail of Tears,
what would I have done? If I had been a German during Hitler´s
reign, where would I have put my body?Would I have taken action?
What would it have looked like?

My friends, we are living in dark and difficult times. This IS our
trail of tears. This IS our Nazi Germay. Our country/ our people
are enslaved to an economy that depends on endless war.

Now is the time for courage. Now is the time to act.

Mary Beth Sullivan
Outreach Coordinator
Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space
PO Box 652
Brunswick, Maine 04011
(207) 443-9502
www.space4peace.org
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