Le Hoai Trung the Socialist Republic of Vietnam Ambassador to the United Nations.

On February 16th 2013 friends, family and comrades of David Cline celebrated his life at Connolly’s Pub and Restaurant in Manhattan. Co-sponsored by Veterans For Peace, Vietnam Veterans Against the War, Iraq Veterans Against the War, Military Families Speak Out, the Vietnam Agent Orange Relief and Responsibility Campaign and the Friends and Family of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade we had a great time remembering Cline and his work, but we also talked about the issues of war and peace facing our organizations today.

We have a lot of material because the program went from 1:30 to 4:30 but today we will hear from Le Hoai Trung the Socialist Republic of Vietnam Ambassador to the United Nations. He gave us the usual greetings from an official, but he also shared with us his experience growing up caught in the crossfire of the Vietnam War. We were all moved by his words. Many of the people in the room participated in creating the horrors he faced, yet he was there with sincerity and hope in his heart talking about how to stop the tragedy and irresponsible folly of war from happening again.

Saturday, February 16, 2013

1:30 – 4:30 pm

Connolly’s Pub & Restaurant,
121 West 45th Street New York, NY 10036

Please click here to RSVP on our Facebook page:

The New York and New Jersey chapters of Veterans For Peace and Vietnam Veterans Against the War plan to stage a commemoration of the late David Cline the afternoon of Saturday 16 February. The theme of the commemoration is “Legacies of War.” The program will focus on lessons learned, reconciliation, dissent in the military, and the role of antiwar veterans in the movement for peace and for economic and social justice.

The organizing committee for the event is chaired by Michael T. McPhearson and Susan Schnall. For more information, and to contact the organizing committee, please visit our FaceBook page at http://on.fb.me/W2hE1F.

Event flier PDF http://bit.ly/XukNZv

In Solidarity,

Sponsoring groups:

Veterans For Peace, Vietnam Agent Orange Relief & Responsibility Campaign, Vietnam Veterans Against the War, Military Families Speak Out, Iraq Veterans Against the War, Friends & Families of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade

The organizing committee

Peter Bronson, Bob Carpenter, Ben Chitty, Ken Dalton, Tom Fasy, George McAnanama, Michael T. McPhearson, Susan Schnall

For those caught in Sandy, I hope this e-mail finds you safe and recovering.  Those who face tragedy are in my prayers and thoughts.

Tuesday is Election Day. I don’t know if it is the most important election ever as some say. In hindsight, the 2000 election seems pretty momentous. But I do know this year’s election is important to what will happen to many people over the next four years. I wrote four pieces to express how I feel about election year 2012. “Voting, a Few Reasons Why,” speaks to why I believe it is important to vote, “The Peace Movement and Electoral Politics,” addresses what is to be done by peace and anti-war activists in relationship to voting, ”Xenophobia,the Christian Taliban, Plutocrats and Oligarchs,” explains why I will be relieved if President Obama is reelected and “Why I am Voting for Jill Stein,” is self-evident. Actually I voted this morning so I already voted for her.

Take care and don’t forget, it takes more than voting. A whole lot more!

This is my personal contribution to the discussion about voting and for whom to vote. I don’t pretend to have all of the answers and concede I may have none of them, but I hope to give you something to think about.

Thanks

Michael T. McPhearson

In contemplating my decision making process, I know that Romney stokes my fears. Therefore, if I still lived in St. Louis, MO I would definitely vote for Obama. But I live in Newark, NJ where I don’t have to vote against Romney. Instead I can register my disgust with the Republicans and Democrats by voting for a third way. I with millions of others will vote for a different vision, a vision in which war is not the first choice to solve international conflict and global domination is not an objective.

I want to support a party that will change the budget priorities of Washington D.C. and stop the practice of allocating more than 50% of federal discretionary spending to the Pentagon. I want to vote for a candidate that does not support indefinite detention, holding a person without charge, or access to a trial, or possibility of being set free for years, if ever. I want to support a candidate who will begin an immediate withdrawal from Afghanistan, and work for a fair and equitable peace process in the Middle East, including abolition of nuclear weapons in the region. I want to cast my vote for a party that will not only talk about helping the middleclass, but also talk about helping the working class, poor and homeless. I am interested in a party that understands climate change is one of the most important challenges facing humanity.

On this basis, I intend to cast my vote for Jill Stein and the Green party.

Will those of us who vote for alternative candidates cause another 2000 debacle when Gore lost to George W. Bush?  I don’t think so. Gore lost in 2000 because he did not appeal to enough voters, the incompetence and corruption in Florida and the Supreme Court. Blaming Nader voters for Gore’s loss is reaching for a scapegoat, letting Gore, his lackluster and middle of the road campaign and the shameful election system off the hook.

In 2008, living in St. Louis, motivated by fear of a McCain Administration and inspired by living to see what abolitionist and activists before me could only imagine, and some could never imagine, a Black President, I voted for Barack Obama. Then it was the right thing for me to do. Today, in 2012 the right thing for me to do is to register my vision for change with a vote for Jill Stein.

But we all know that either Obama or Romney will be the next president. I do not want Romney to win because I believe he has cobbled together a coalition that represents the most reactionary elements in national politics. There is a strong undercurrent of xenophobia and hate running through the Republican Party. They have an “us vs. them” narrative for most all of the nation’s challenges. They blame a swath of groups including teachers, unions, poor people, people of color, feminist, immigrants, Islam, and homosexuals for the slow economy, the national debt and all things gone wrong. The party’s vision is backward looking, championing a return to an imagined past America; a more racist, sexist, homophobic and White America.

The Republican Party is the home of theocrats for which the separation of church and state is a nuisance. They lead the charge to end access to abortion, limit rights of lesbian, gays, bi sexual transgendered and queer people, deny important precepts of science and seek to imprint their version of Christian values into U.S. law (thoroughly misrepresenting the teachings of Jesus in the process).

But today the people who may be the most important in helping Governor Romney are a specific set of plutocrats and oligarchs who are pouring money into his campaign. Although both Obama and Romney are supported by the ruling class, a number of them have decided to back Romney because they believe President Obama is encouraging class envy and warfare. Some have gone so far as to claim he is promoting socialism. These views appear to be most prevalent among the ultra-rich. Of course this is absurd, but it speaks to their narrow understanding of socialism and their inflated sense of worth and entitlement. A New Yorker magazine article titled “Super Rich Irony: Why do billionaires feel victimized by Obama?” does an excellent job outlining their thinking. The piece by Chrystia Freeland quotes  among others Omega Advisor hedge fund founder Leon Cooperman, a Bronx-born, sixty-nine-year-old billionaire as saying, “Our problem, frankly, is as long as the President remains anti-wealth, anti-business, anti-energy, anti-private-aviation, he will never get the business community behind him. The problem and the complication is the forty or fifty percent of the country on the dole that support him.”

Instead of acknowledging their accumulation of wealth as a combination of their ingenuity, hard work, good fortune and a helping hand or encouragement from parents, teachers and mentors, Mr. Cooperman and the business community he claims to speak for appear to believe that they are self-made, rich solely due to their talents. They convey feelings of entitlement. They are the creators and the “forty or fifty percent” are takers. They dismiss the fact that their businesses are kept running by the sweat, blood and tears of the workers and dedicated experts who know their jobs inside and out. They ignore the fact that they need working class people, who toil and struggle to take care of their families, to buy their products. They take for granted all the advantages provided by the U.S. market including the most efficient worker in the world, highly developed infrastructure and magnet for global talent.

This quote from a letter to President Obama from Mr. Cooperman exposes the depth of his arrogance, “As a group we employ many millions of taxpaying people, pay their salaries, provide them with healthcare coverage, start new companies, found new industries, create new products, fill store shelves at Christmas, and keep the wheels of commerce and progress (and indeed of government, by generating the income whose taxation funds it) moving.”

Yes he wrote fill store shelves at Christmas and progress moving. In his minds they keep the world on its axis.

I don’t know for sure if Romney agrees with this wing of the ruling class. Who knows what Romney believes? He is like a blank slate ready to say what he thinks you need to hear. But I suspect he does. His taped comments about the forty-seven percent who see themselves as victims and are dependent on government echoing Cooperman’s sentiment is well known. I am most disturbed by his comment on the tape that these people “believe that they are entitled to healthcare, to food, to housing.”

Ayn Rand

I believe as a society we have a responsibility to provide healthcare and end hunger and homelessness. His view is one of leaving people behind because as takers they deserve nothing better. Romney’s pick of Paul Ryan is another indicator of his belief in this worldview. Ryan and many of these self-proclaimed self-made businessmen are devoted admirers of Ayn Rand, champion of ethical egoism, the belief that moral agents ought to do what is in their own self-interest. This is the opposite of my belief in ethical altruism, which holds that moral agents have an obligation to help and serve others. That is the ideal, but as a practical matter I realize most people act somewhere in between. Ethical egoism allows the individual to rationalize all actions as just because the act is in the persons best interest, never mind the suffering caused by that action. Therefore we have these unapologetic moneyed men who charge Obama with socialism and have not been held accountable for nearly destroying the world economy with their greed. They believe their genius brought prosperity and the crash is the unfortunate and unavoidable price paid for growth. Just let us loose and we will bring prosperity (to ourselves) again. Ironically during the Obama Administration, these men have done much better than the average person. Emmanuel Saez a University of California, Berkeley economist has crunched numbers that show in2010, the top 1% of earners took in 93% of all income gains leaving 7% to be shared by the rest of us.  But because the President wants to establish baseline accountability and asks them to invest in the nation’s future, they cry foul and off with his head.

I see these men as the greatest threat to our economy and liberty. Their disrespect and apparent disdain for the working class drives policies that concentrate wealth. Their adherence to ethical egoism can lead them to follow any course they believe will keep them in power because they believe the world needs them in power to prosper, the divine right of wealth. Industrialist such as these men acting in their perceived self-interest supported Hitler, not necessarily because they were anti-Semitic or wanted to conquer Europe, but because they thought they could control him to forward their own interests. In 1936 powerful American business men with the same mentality and feeling threatened by President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s policies asked Major General Smedley Butler to head a coup to overthrow the U.S. government. Fortunately for the Republic Butler outed the plot to a special Congressional committee.

While I understand much will not change under a Romney or a second Obama Administration some things will. The forces supporting Romney represent more than the greater of two evils. A Romney win will give momentum to xenophobes, the Christian Taliban and unfettered capitalism driven by egotistical capitalists. This coalition embraces hate and fear as central organizing tools. The ascendency of this coalition to the highest office in the land is the first step to take “this country back” as they say, to what I see as a hybrid Confederacy and 1950’s, undercutting gains under Republicans and Democrats since the Civil War. Remember, State’s Rights was a Southern argument to protect slavery, not Republican.

While the Democrat Party has too many flaws to mention here, on whole the people who support Democrats represent the spirit of human struggle against oppression, hate and fear. While the party has not rid itself of these evils, there are plenty of people working to do so. I stand with them. Far too many of Romney’s supporters are embracing bigotry, misogyny and a servitude form of capitalism. It is the same mentality my ancestors and activist before me struggled against. I must recognize it for what it is and also stand against it. For these reasons, I will be relieved Wednesday morning if Obama wins and in some distress if he loses.

I understand the frustration of feeling like Democrats and Republicans do not provide real choices or alternatives, but we should always take the time to voice our sentiment. For me, voting is essential to the process of non-violent change. People register what they like, don’t like and which direction they want to go. The alternative vote, be it for Ross Perot in 92, Pat Buchanan and Ralph Nader in 2000 or Jill Stein in 2012, tells the world that many of us want something different. Millions of citizens can see that they are not alone in their dissatisfaction with the status quo and are willing to speak out through the ballot box. This important statement can, depending on the size of the vote, alter political discourse and outcomes.

Is voting a waste of time? I ask how do you propose to change the values and direction of government if we do not at some point elect officials with our values? If the people decide a little rebellion is necessary, then so be it. But after the ousting of one government we must return to a vote. Military coups and dictatorships seize power, representatives of a peoples’ revolution are voted into power.

So until the revolution, our voting helps to ensure the political idea and process of voting remains an expectation. I believe in democracy not theocracy, one party or emperors. The rights we don’t use we lose, and voting is no exception. If we lose the right to vote we will find ourselves in a very different political space with truly one party, the party, in power. All other parties will be illegal.  No Green, Libertarian, Peace and Freedom, American Populist or any other party. The simple act of voting helps ensure these rights of discourse and association.

Equally important and even more instructive is that people died for the right to vote, murdered by those who wanted to keep people from having a say.  This should not be taken lightly. Today we’re fighting well-funded campaigns seeking to bar millions of people of color, young people and seniors from voting. If voting is a waste of time and changes nothing, why is there a national movement to suppress members of my community from voting? The struggle for access to vote will never end because there is power in voting to maintain the status quo or to change it.

Is it necessary to vote in every election? No. Many times the choices aren’t really choices at all and it may be necessary to stay home as your statement. But next time be creative and register your dissatisfaction. Write in a candidate or a protest statement like No War, Peace, or None of the above. Organize a campaign for the next cycle so your write-in candidate or statement will make the news.

I vote because I believe in non-violent democratic change. Voting is only one element in the socioeconomic process of change, but a very important one. It can bring a Hitler or a Mandela, healthcare reform or the loss of hard won gains. Don’t be fooled into thinking voting doesn’t matter. That’s what many in power want you to think.

“With nearly half of all suicides in the military having been committed with privately owned firearms, the Pentagon and Congress are moving to establish policies intended to separate at-risk service members from their personal weapons.

My comments: In an ongoing attempt to address the problem of rising suicides in the military the Pentagon is contemplating ways to separate soldiers from their personal firearms. Six of every 10 military suicides are by firearms, with nearly half involving privately owned guns. The rate is slightly lower in the civilian world.  The idea is not forced confiscation, rather counseling and advice to soldiers who appear to be at risk for suicide to give their guns to friends or keep them locked up on base.  Many times the actual decision and attempt to commit suicide is during a crisis. Access to highly lethal means increases the possibility of the person trying to commit suicide and their the possibility of their success. A Harvard School of Public Health article reports “it becomes increasingly clear that how a person attempts–the means they use–plays a key role in whether they live or die,” including access to fire arms.

Of course the National Rifle Association has its hand in this debate about troop access to guns. A 2011 measure, which was part of the Defense Authorization Act and passed at the urging of the N.R.A., was viewed by many military officials as preventing commanders and counselors from discussing gun safety with potentially suicidal troops. This is of course absurd. I can see you are suicidal but I can’t talk to you about gun safety to save your life? A new measure is in the 2012 version of the act that will make it clear that a discussion with troops is not prohibited.

It is sad that we continue to sacrifice the lives of service members even after they return home. The selfish N.R.A. is so focused on their version of the Freedom to Bear Arms that it is willing to sacrifice everyone and everything to maintain their position, even the lives of soldiers who have already put their life on the line in war and are now struggling to stay alive at home.

But most disturbing is the Pentagon and our nation’s refusal to see that the wars are the main reason for the suicides and that to stop the deaths here at home we must stop the killing abroad. It’s not rocket science. Eleven years of continuous war has brought us a broken economy, tens of thousands dead and maimed and no sign of “victory” by any measure in sight. Troops come home to few jobs and limited access to services to help them with the economic, physical and mental health challenges they face. Trying to make sense of going to war and the dismal situation many of them find themselves facing upon returning from war, suicide appears to be a way out. First step to ending the suicides is ending the wars.

New York Times article here.

Did the news inform you of this sad anniversary? Of course not, because our political leaders want us to forget what is happening. They don’t want us to question our constant and relentless use of war. They don’t want us to think about why over 50% of the federal budget’s discretionary spending is military. Yet with all the money and the superior military force the U.S. possesses, 11 years later we are still in a war in the 12th poorest country in the world. The people continue to resist, their will is not broken and it does not seem close to being so.

Has it not become obvious something is wrong? Billions are being spent, meaning this war has become a cash cow. It is time my friends, in fact it is past time to BRING OUR TROOPS HOME.

We all must head the words of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., “So man’s proneness to engage in war is still a fact. But wisdom born of experience should tell us that war is obsolete. There may have been a time when war served as a negative good by preventing the spread and growth of an evil force, but the destructive power of modern weapons eliminated even the possibility that war may serve as a negative good. If we assume that life is worth living and that man has a right to survive, then we must find an alternative to war. “

First we must understand that election cycles are like the tide. They come in, take over and recede. Like the tide, the election season comes no matter our feelings about it. Instead of futilely trying to fight the election tide we must capture some of its energy and utilize the snapshot as a one of our own gauges for progress. We also need to stop alienating people we need as allies to advance our cause. This does not mean withholding criticism of Democrats, their flaws and specific policies, but it does mean understanding why people make their choices and humbling ourselves by admitting our part in creating a climate where people feel they have no recourse than to vote for Democrats. We do hold some responsibility for failing to build something strong and deep enough or a vision sharp enough for people to take hope in. We should own up to some of that failure.

To counter that problem, we must use elections as an opportunity to build coalitions and measure where we are on the road to the change we seek. Instead of internal fighting, unnecessary conflicts with allies or being ignored by them during the election cycle, the peace community should engage in voter registration and GOTV activities to build our networks and expand the participation and efficiency of the political process for when candidates with our values run. The point is not to work to elect Democrats or necessarily run our own candidates, but rather to engage people in the process via education and exposure to the values and aspirations of a peace movement. There are more people thinking about politics during this period, so let’s talk to them. We want all people engaged in the process to think about how their votes hinder or forward the goals of peace, but the people we engage will be more likely to do so.

Finally, we must strive to build a social movement across the full spectrum of issues that can transform political impact. We need a shift in values of the electorate:  what people expect from themselves and what they expect and accept from government. If we build coalitions that begin to address local issues like violence and poverty with remedies which rely primarily on citizen organizing and action rather than demands to government and powerbrokers, people will begin to see that they do not need the “powerful” to change their communities. With concrete successes as examples of their own power and sharing the examples from across the country, a new way of seeing national politics can emerge. If people feel empowered then we will begin to have new expectations of responsibility from the 1% and government.

The election period is an opportunity to discuss, organize and educate, not a time for accusations and arguments.  Let us stop wasting opportunities to engage and build relationships by helping to expand voter registration and work to ensure elections are transparent, free and fair.  If we take this approach to our organizing during this period we will increase the number of new people we talk to about peace and their vote. We should not participate in the process to support a party. We should participate because we believe in democratic nonviolent change.

Metal or Debt, A Chain’s Uh Chain

Vice-President Biden is known for putting his foot in his mouth.  For example, saying the GOP wants to “….put y’all in chains,” to a heavily Black audience may not have been the least controversial way to get his point across, but there is substance behind his gaffe. While I don’t know if he was trying to fan the flames of racial friction that already exists in the race for the White House, but the policies Romney and Ryan tout do indeed have racist elements.

Consider the communities hardest hit by the mortgage, financial and subsequent economic crisis: Black communities have disproportionately suffered, with Black homeowners losing the largest percentage of wealth from the financial crisis, reducing Black wealth to historic lows and creating an even larger gap in wealth between Black and Whites. Black communities already plagued by lack of resources have faced municipal budget cuts which led to cuts in service and public sector layoffs, fewer jobs and higher crime.    While perhaps Biden could have chosen his words more carefully, he draws upon the reality of the matter:  Republican economic plans will only make things worse.

And this fits in nicely with what I believe to be a goal of some of the 1% to rule the 99.  It appears the general object of the financial sector and big business is to tie as many of us as possible to eternal debt and eliminate benefits to the poor and working class. They want the government no matter the size to protect and help expand markets abroad while maintaining a hands-off or extreme laissez-faire approach to their interests here at home. It is a multi-faceted effort to ensure that, over time, the poor and middle classes will be little more than serfs.

The unprecedented attack on public sector workers is an attempt to drive down wages and benefits in the name of profits and competitiveness across all sectors. The attempt to marginalize unions is an effort to increase the leverage of bosses and owners over employees and workers. Fewer benefits and a skimpy public safety net greatly reduce workers’ employment choices. This places more people at the mercy of employers because fewer people will risk losing their jobs. Healthcare is one of the chains in this formula of bondage because only a few of the employed will have coverage which increases the power of the employer. An example of this power is the threat of losing coverage due to a so called pre-existing condition. In most states, private insurance companies can refuse to insure adults if they have a pre-existing condition. The Affordable Healthcare Act made it illegal to refuse coverage for a child under 19. In 2014 the protection will be extended to all ages. Until then if hard working Sara Citizen is unhappy in her job with coverage and has found a better one with coverage she may be reluctant to leave the sucky job because she has Multiple Sclerosis.

The mortgage crisis serves as the starkest example of the attempt to chain millions to debt. A May 2012 CNN Money article states 16 million people owe more on their homes than they are worth. Banks expect home “owners” to pay this difference of which in most cases is tens of thousands of dollars between the value and what they owe on the home. With this arrangement the bank will make tens of thousands of dollars in interests on the loans as they usually do and harvest the difference in value. This in effect makes the homeowner a sharecropper of sorts or a serf for the banks. For most of the term of the loan, the owner who is really a buyer has little equity in the home. He or she is making the land really owned by the bank productive because the owner/buyer is working to pay the bank and take care of a house to maintain value in property he or she may never really own. During the life of the loan most buyers will have paid the value of the property to the banks many times over. The home owner/buyer is also the same taxpayer who bailed out the banks, pulling them out of the abyss they dug and now fill with the money they make from people continuing to pay the interest on their underwater homes.  Debt is a kind of chain that can only be broken by paying it off or going into bankruptcy. Most people want to be “responsible citizens” and resist declaring bankruptcy, instead doing all they can to pay off the manufactured debt.

Republicans claim that Wall Street and business have been chained by government interference. However it is clear, good for the country and the people who live in it or not, Wall Street and corporations will do whatever it takes to make a profit. Biden had it right.  The hands off policies peddled by Romney and Ryan will lead to more debt and fewer choices for working class and poor people. Don’t let the hype distract you from the truth of his gaffe. Metal or debt, a chain is a chain.