“HOW CAN I KEEP FROM
SINGING?”
SOCIAL JUSTICE LAY SERVICE
JANUARY 26, 2003
OPENING
Ginnie Vogts Please rise as willing and able for the opening words, followed by the reading printed in yourorder of celebration. In the words of Unitarian Universalist minister, Mark Morrison-Reed,
“The central task of the religious community is to unveil the bonds that bind us all. There is a connectedness, a relationship discovered amid the particulars of our own lives and the lives of others. Once felt, it inspires us to act for justice.
It is the church that assures us that we are not struggling for justice on our own, but as members of a larger community. The religious community is essential, for alone our vision is too narrow to see all that must be seen, and our strength too limited to do all that must be done. Together, our vision widens and our strength is renewed.”
Scott Lewis Please join me in reading from your order of celebration, “May our reason and passion keep us true to ourselves, true to each other, and true to those shared visions of what we can together become.”
COMMUNING
Eleanor Helper: Silence, naming
We are a gentle, angry people. Our service today is about finding our voices and saying what we believe to be true about justice and injustice in the world. We gather strength for that task not only by listening to and interacting with others, but by listening to the silence around us. Let’s take a moment now to center ourselves in the beauty and stillness of this moment in time and this place in the world.
TEMPLE BELL…..
Let us remember now the names of the people who have shaped our lives and made us who we are. I encourage you to speak their names aloud and to remember not only those whose love we have intimately known, but also those whom we don’t know but who have spoken with reason and passion for justice and equity, for they affect us, too, and make us who we are. Malcolm X….Philip Berrigan….Rosa Parks. . . .Paul Wellstone
Our Social Justice Committee has chosen today’s readings because each one reflects in a different way our ongoing struggle for the right to challenge the powerful and to speak freely and effectively in defense of the powerless. Our first reading comes from this nation’s Bill of Rights and is a legal guarantee of free speech . The second is from George Orwell’s fictional account of a world where language is manipulated to protect the powerful and free speech has become an illusion. The third, from the Senate testimony of Attorney General John Aschcroft, is chilling in its warning that criticism of the administration’s policies is a grave offense.
Reading 1 John
McCrystal:
Here are the words of the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States. Ratified December 15, 1791, it is the first of the ten amendments known as the Bill of Rights.
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”
Reading 2 Barb Avery:
Winston, the main character in George Orwell’s nightmarish, anti-utopian novel, 1984, the novel that coined the terms “Big Brother” and “Newspeak,” is standing in his apartment looking out at the city of London:
“The Ministry of Truth—Minitrue, in Newspeak*--was startlingly different from any other object in sight. It was an enormous pyramidal structure of glittering white concrete, soaring up, terrace after terrace, three hundred meters into the air. From where Winston stood it was just possible to read, picked out on its white face in elegant lettering, the three slogans of the Party:
WAR IS PEACE
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH.”
Reading 3 Jean Werts:
Attorney General John Ashcroft needs no introduction. This is an excerpt of what he said in testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, December 7, 2001:
''[T]errorists are taught how to use America's freedoms as a weapon against us. . . . [Criticism of the administration] gives ammunition to America's enemies, and pause to America's friends. . . . To those who scare peace-loving people with phantoms of lost liberty, my message is this: your tactics only aid terrorists.''
John Ashcroft’s words remind us that the powerful often take it upon themselves to limit people’s freedoms for seemingly good reasons. Almost always, though, with the passage of time we are able to look back and see that those reasons were wrongheaded or mistaken or derived from the worst kind of fear and prejudice or from the desire for power over others, as in George Orwell’s disturbing novel, 1984.
Our own long history in the United States has been an arduous and continuous battle to wrangle the most tenuous of rights and protections for the most vulnerable of our citizens—minorities, women, children, immigrants, exploited laborers, and most recently Arab Americans. It is not, after all, people like John Ashcroft whose freedoms need protection, but those who are marginalized, or who have meager means and few opportunities, or who hold unpopular views that the powerful believe to be dangerous.
John Ashcroft dismisses our fears of lost liberties as phantoms, while George Orwell warns us that language can be twisted to serve the needs of the powerful few while pretending to promote the safety, security, and liberty of all.
Often it is easier to understand and object to the injustices of the past than to those of the present. We might go so far as to say that our world would be in much worse shape today than it is if ordinary people like us throughout history had not been willing and able to assess their own worlds and to object—in a thousand different ways—to the injustices they saw around them—injustices that are often obscured by real concerns for safety and security.
All too often, those who have spoken out have done so in the full knowledge that their criticisms and ideas would embroil them in a lonely struggle not only against popular opinion, but often against the scorn and rejection of their own families and friends. Today we want to step back and seize a moment from the life of Susan B. Anthony, a woman who spoke eloquently and often in the struggle for full citizenship for African Americans and for women.
One-hundred thirty years ago, Susan B. Anthony was arrested and convicted of the crime of voting in the 1872 Presidential election. After her conviction, she gave speech after speech insisting upon the recognition of women as full citizens of the United States. We look back at her words and what she had to say seems so obvious now that it’s hard to imagine anyone disagreeing with her. Yet as she traveled from town to town in Monroe County in upstate New York delivering her stump speech, she was scorned and derided and considered a dangerous radical. Here is an excerpt from her speech. Try to imagine how it must have felt to be in her shoes, pleading with the powerful to recognize her as fully human.
Ginnie Vogts:
“Friends and fellow citizens: I stand before you tonight under indictment for the alleged crime of having voted at the last presidential election, without having a lawful right to vote. It shall be my work this evening to prove to you that in thus voting, I not only committed no crime, but, instead, simply exercised my citizen's rights, guaranteed to me and all United States citizens by the National Constitution, beyond the power of any state to deny.
“The preamble of the Federal Constitution says:
‘We, the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.’
“It was we, the people; not we, the white male citizens; nor yet we, the male citizens; but we, the whole people, who formed the Union. And we formed it, not to give the blessings of liberty, but to secure them; not to the half of ourselves and the half of our posterity, but to the whole people - women as well as men. And it is a downright mockery to talk to women of their enjoyment of the blessings of liberty while they are denied the use of the only means of securing them provided by this democratic-republican government - the ballot. . . .
“To [women] this government has
no just powers derived from the consent of the governed. To them this government
is not a democracy. It is not a republic. It is an odious aristocracy; a
hateful oligarchy of sex; the most hateful aristocracy ever established on
the face of the globe; an oligarchy of wealth, where the rich govern the
poor. . . .
“Webster, Worcester, and Bouvier all define a citizen to be a person in the United States, entitled to vote and hold office. The only question left to be settled now is: Are women persons? And I hardly believe any of our opponents will have the hardihood to say they are not. Being persons, then, women are citizens; and no state has a right to make any law, or to enforce any old law, that shall abridge their privileges or immunities. Hence, every discrimination against women in the constitutions and laws of the several states is today null and void, precisely as is every one against Negroes.”
Marge Lynd:
Often it is easier in retrospect than it is in the present to pick out those whose words have stood in opposition to the powerful and to the status quo. But the present offers its own profiles in courage. We might single out Barbara Lee, Congresswoman from California, who, on September 14, 2001, 3 days after Sept 11, was the only member of Congress to vote against the Congressional resolution giving President Bush virtually unlimited power to use military force in response to the attacks on New York and Washington. Lee warned us that Congress was ceding its future authority to the President in all matters related to waging war. Here is part of what she wrote in the San Francisco Chronicle just 12 days after the attacks on the World Trade Center.
Eleanor Helper:
“Last week, filled with grief and sorrow for those killed and injured and with anger at those who had done this, I confronted the solemn responsibility of voting to authorize the nation to go to war. Some believe this resolution was only symbolic, designed to show national resolve. But I could not ignore that it provided explicit authority, under the War Powers Resolution and the Constitution, to go to war.
“It was a blank check to the president to attack anyone involved in the Sept. 11 events -- anywhere, in any country, without regard to our nation's long- term foreign policy, economic and national security interests, and without time limit. In granting these overly broad powers, the Congress failed its responsibility to understand the dimensions of its declaration. I could not support such a grant of war-making authority to the president; I believe it would put more innocent lives at risk.
“The president has the constitutional authority to protect the nation from further attack and he has mobilized the armed forces to do just that. The Congress should have waited for the facts to be presented and then acted with fuller knowledge of the consequences of our action.
“I have heard from thousands of my constituents in the wake of this vote. Many -- a majority -- have counseled restraint and caution, demanding that we ascertain the facts and ensure that violence does not beget violence. They understand the boundless consequences of proceeding hastily to war, and I thank them for their support.
“Others believe that I should have voted for the resolution -- either for symbolic or geopolitical reasons, or because they truly believe a military option is unavoidable. However, I am not convinced that voting for the resolution preserves and protects U.S. interests. We must develop our intelligence and bring those who did this to justice. We must mobilize and maintain an international coalition against terrorism. Finally, we have a chance to demonstrate to the world that great powers can choose to fight on the fronts of their choosing, and that we can choose to avoid needless military action when other avenues to redress our rightful grievances and to protect our nation are available to us.
“We must respond, but the character of that response will determine for us and for our children the world that they will inherit. I do not dispute the president's intent to rid the world of terrorism -- but we have many means to reach that goal, and measures that spawn further acts of terror or that do not address the sources of hatred do not increase our security.
“Secretary of State Colin Powell himself eloquently pointed out the many ways to get at the root of this problem -- economic, diplomatic, legal and political, as well as military. A rush to launch precipitous military counterattacks runs too great a risk that more innocent men, women, children will be killed. I could not vote for a resolution that I believe could lead to such an outcome.”
Marge Lynd:
Even in September 2001, some of us no doubt agreed with Barbara Lee and applauded her courage as the one and only voice of resistance in that time of overwhelming grief and fear. Already her words have proven prophetic as we have watched the good will and sympathy the world lavished on the U.S. after September 11 dwindle, only to reappear as anger at our arrogance and frustration at our government’s unwillingness to rethink its relations to other nations and to other people in the world.
When she spoke out in opposition to virtually everyone in Washington, Barbara Lee was ridiculed in the press and dismissed as a crazy liberal from—wouldn’t you know it?—San Francisco. She received hate messages and death threats, but she stood her ground, and will perhaps one day be remembered as the only person in Congress who got it right that day. She has since spoken out in favor of bringing U.S. concerns about Iraq to the UN, taking international opinions into account, addressing the causes of violence against Americans, and abandoning the unconscionable and terrifying—some would say terrorist—policy of “pre-emptive strikes.”
Bill Fullarton:
Susan B. Anthony was—and Barbara Lee is—a full-time political activist. Most of us are not. Yet, as our UU principles suggest, the burden of our faith is to seek the truth, work for justice, and commit ourselves to the belief that we are connected to all human beings. People disagree about the issues that Barbara Lee spoke about so eloquently. People in this congregation no doubt disagree about them as well. But nothing is more basic to our faith than making the effort to inform ourselves about the issues, to make sure that, 10 or 20 or 30 years from now we don’t look back and say “we didn’t know” or “we should have paid more attention.” Like Susan B. Anthony and Barbara Lee, we need sometimes to take the unpopular view, however uncomfortable or even dangerous that may be.
History overflows with grim reminders of the perils of silence. We can wonder what peace-loving people in Germany thought when the first yellow star was sewn upon the coat of a Jewish man. We know what happened when that group of people was targeted as dangerous, subversive, and irrevocably “other.” What fears and hardships caused so many good and caring people to remain silent for so long? “How could they not have known?” we ask.
We can wonder how thousands of loyal Japanese Americans—grandfathers and grandmothers, aunts and uncles, friends and neighbors, babies and toddlers and teenagers—were stripped of their property, their rights, and their humanity and sent to internment camps for the duration of World War II. How could even so brilliant and thoughtful a jurist as William O. Douglas have believed that was the right thing to do?
We can wonder how, in 1964, our government could have passed the Tonkin Gulf Resolution, based as it was on false accusations against the North Vietnamese, that gave two presidents the authority to wage virtually unlimited war on one of the poorest nations on earth. How many of us believed the “domino theory,” the idea that nations would topple into Communism one after the other if it were not stopped in Vietnam? How many lives were lost before we left that country in ruins? How long did it take for voices of peace to prevail?
We can wonder how 40 years of Palestinian occupation has led to intractability, desperation, and daily violence in the Middle East. What fears and blindnesses allow the carnage to continue? What hatred of the United States is generated by our government’s unwillingness or inability to insist on peace and justice and fairness in that devastated land where great religions were born? How many of us believe that the U.S. failure to work tirelessly for a peaceful solution to the Israeli-Palestinian standoff has nothing to do with the frustration and anger of the Muslim world?
None of these issues, past or present, has ever been black and white. The “right” answers don’t ordinarily appear to us in epiphanies. We get it wrong a lot—all of us do. But as UUs we have not only our good sense, our interest in the world, and our desire for peace and justice. We also have the strength of our principles—our emphasis on the worth and dignity of every human being, our responsibility to seek out the truth and to work for justice, our belief that we live in an interconnected world—to help us find our voices in troubled times. We know that to speak of an “axis of evil” is to demonize others and make it impossible either to find solutions to the massive and complex problems that beset the world or to see the human faces that everywhere reflect our own best hopes and dreams.
We might wonder now what is going through the minds of Arab American citizens as they watch legal, law-abiding immigrants from Muslim countries be registered and fingerprinted by the federal government. We might wonder now how many Arab Americans are still being detained without access to legal advice or how many “enemy combatants” are wrongly imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay. Are we troubled to know that the U.S. Court of Appeals in Virginia has ruled that it is legal to arrest and detain American citizens without charging them with any crime? If history teaches us nothing else, it surely teaches us that our freedoms are most deeply threatened in times of conflict and uncertainty. This is just such a time, and we must be doubly cautious not to make rash decisions in the name of safety and security.
We need to look beyond the all-but-spoken
message that “War is Peace; Freedom is Slavery; and Ignorance is
Strength.” We need to look
beyond this rhetoric of fear and seek out the information we need to decide
for ourselves what is right and what is
wrong. We won’t all agree
on the best course for this nation to
take. But if we act on our
principles we can hope that future generations won’t look back at the
beginning of the 21st century and wonder what we were
thinking.
Offering Marge: We are happy to be here together on this very cold January day. We take the offering now so that we may keep this place warm and welcoming, a respite from the world and at the same time a vital connection to it. Please give what you can in the spirit of openness and generosity this church nurtures so well. Thank you.
Blessing
Jackie Angelino: We
close with these words from Elie Wiesel, holocaust survivor and Nobel Peace
Prize winner, from an article written in 1986. “The opposite of love
is not hate, it’s indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness,
it’s indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it’s
indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it’s
indifference.”