Text of Marybeth Riley Gardam’s May 2nd Kindness speech
Nollen Plaza in downtown Des Moines, Iowa
I am Marybeth Riley Gardam and I rise to speak on behalf of the women of WILPF, Des Moines Chapter… Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom. Women who have been activists for peace and social justice in our community since the 1960s. I am humbled to stand with them. Lucy Krauss, one of our founders is here with us today.
I offer you the words of a poet:
Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.
Before you learn the tender gravity of
kindness, you must travel where
the Indian in a white poncho lies
dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.
Before you know kindness
as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow
as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of ALL sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.
Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day
to mail letters and purchase bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
it is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you every where
like a shadow or a friend.
The words of Palestinian American poet Naomi Nye are powerful. They speak of kindness…a quality not much in evidence in our society these days.
Revenge, retribution, the ‘you are with us or against us’ rhetoric is divisive …but it’s everywhere. It stops dialogue, ends creative seeking for solutions and invites tragedy on the scale we can hardly take in.
Surely the United States does not make its foreign policy decisions based on kindness.
Critics of peace advocates will pillory anyone who assumes that they should do so.
Kindness is NOT a foreign policy or a defense strategy. How will kindness protect us from the horror of terrorists murdering innocent people? And yet without kindness, the simple ability to feel compassion and put ourselves in the shoes of others, what kind of protection is there in the world?
I am moved by the belief of the Quakers who base their beliefs on the foundation that there is that of God in every man… in every woman… in every child… in every living being. And therefore reverence for God demands that we show respect, and yes, kindness, for every living creature.
Today we meet to confront the situation in which our nation finds ourselves. We are so divided, even among ourselves. And yet we must force ourselves to look past the overarching conflicts of this moment, and towards that which unites us.
Congress must find the courage to do what’s right, even though the short term repercussions will be dire. It was they who laid the groundwork for America’s untenable position now. And in saying that, we know that it was also OUR mistake for not objecting more strenuously to the cowboy response and a violent ill-conceived, ill-matched attack on Iraq. Where were the hundreds of thousands of us who SHOULD have protested then?
Those of us who stood on street corners in 2001, just after 9/11, in an effort to hold back the hands of our government and society from a mindless rush to revenge…we understood that swinging blindly in the dark in a roomful of people with automatic weapons is not a prudent way to protect our nation.
We men and women of Iowa who tried in 2002 to prevent this ill-conceived war from ever beginning, knew what the repercussions of Shock and Awe would truly be.
Who is shocked now? Over what multi-national, financial, human and infrastructure carnage do we now stand in awe?
There are those who say if we pull out our military forces, there can be only chaos and the loss of innocent lives. They are right. But to leave them in play only delays that reality. We should have seen beyond shock and awe to this possibility and planned for it. The people of Iraq expected that of us. We owed it to them, and also to the brave young American men and women we sacrificed on this altar of hubris. Let us not compound the mistake any further by leaving our troops in place any longer. Not one more day.
There are those who say that the Iraqis are not yet ready to claim participatory democracy for themselves. They too are right. After 200 years, we Americans too seem still unable to fully claim it and engage in it and meaningfully navigate it ourselves.
Full responsible citizenship can not seem to grip the attention of Americans the way that mindless television, consumerism or what passes as the American Dream do. We need to re-envision what democracy really looks like, and what is its true creative potential. We at WILPF are committed to that effort.
How many bodies on our doorstep will it take before we turn off the empty tube and pay attention to the consequences of our own inadequate involvement in the decisions and policies of our government?
There are those who say that the President is right to veto this war appropriations bill because it is flawed and imperfect. He vetoes it… but for the wrong reasons. He vetoes it only because it did not continue to give him unlimited power, unlimited time, unlimited money with which to sink America deeper into a complex and immoral occupation.
There are those who say the Democrats are gutless wonders who are not willing to press for a deadline for troop withdrawal, in the name of votes and expediency. They are also right, and our Democracy is weaker because of it.
Where are the men and women of vision and values and courage to lead us by wisdom and compassion through this dark moment in our history? Perhaps it’s true, as David Korten says, that We Are The People We’ve Been Waiting For. Perhaps it’s up to US.
The Iraqis need our help, it’s true…….but not as an occupying Army. Not as a pawn that their puppet leaders can use against their own people. Not as a factor that compounds the horror of sectarian violence and civil war.
We can not help the Iraqis until we can recognize our own failings, prosecute those who pushed us into this illegitimate war and return our budget to a defining moral document… a document that reflects our values as a people.
Further, not until we can embrace our OWN participatory democracy, demand a foreign policy that honors human beings ahead of profits and oil, protects the common wealth of our people, evens the playing field between ordinary Americans and the powerful profits at any cost corporations…and opens dialogue as a way towards peace… in short, not until we can help ourselves out of our current predicament can we bring meaningful help to the Iraqis. Democracy not be sewn at the end of a gun. And it can not be taken for granted here at home either.
For those who believe that peace is impractical, a dreamer’s desperate pipedream, I quote John F. Kennedy who spoke in 1963 of the Soviet Union in the cold war’s darkest days. He was able to detest the policies of Communism while grasping the hands of the Russian people in friendship and a real hope for peace and disarmament.
He said on June 10. 1963:
First: Let us examine our attitude toward peace itself. Too many of us think it is impossible. Too many think it unreal. But that is a dangerous, defeatist belief. It leads to the conclusion that war is inevitable — that mankind is doomed — that we are gripped by forces we cannot control.
We need not accept that view. Our problems are manmade — therefore, they can be solved by man. And man can be as big as he wants. No problem of human destiny is beyond human beings. Man’s reason and spirit have often solved the seemingly unsolvable — and we believe they can do it again.
I am not referring to the absolute, infinite concept of universal peace and good will of which some fantasies and fanatics dream. I do not deny the value of hopes and dreams, but we merely invite discouragement and incredulity by making that our only and immediate goal.
Let us focus instead on a more practical, more attainable peace….. let us not be blind to our differences — but let us also direct attention to our common interests and to the means by which those differences can be resolved. And if we cannot end now our differences, at least we can help make the world safe for diversity. For, in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children’s future. And we are all mortal.
Today we call on our Congress and our President to put aside hubris and divisiveness and work towards a timely and permanent withdrawal of forces from Iraq…. to help that troubled country repair itself through a process of aid and discernment… to bring to justice those officials who led our nation into this place of shame and horror … and to honor our soldiers by bringing them home. Not because it is the best course, but because it is the ONLY course of honor left to us.
The poet says:
Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
We have known SORROW and LOSS together with the Iraqi people.
Now let us have blind unblinking justice… and with Justice…. PEACE.
Thank you.