Kucinich's Acceptance Speech for the 2003 Gandhi Peace Award

Dennis Kucinich's Acceptance Speech for the 2003 Gandhi Peace Award

I'm glad to have this moment to be with you and to express first of
all my gratitude for being the recipient of the 2003 Gandhi Peace
Award. It's very humbling to have my name associated with the name of
a true visionary, of someone whose life was a gift to the world, and
whose life many of us in public careers try to emulate. And I want to
thank all of you who work to keep this fine organization going. When I
first arrived, I had the opportunity to speak to many of you about
your own commitments, about your work.  And it's especially humbling
to have the opportunity to share this evening with you, because this
is your life's work too. Your life's work is dedicated to the active
work on behalf of peace. There are some who think that peace is
somehow a static activity.  Far from it. It's a dynamic _expression of
the possibilities of human aspiration. For those of you who came in
from New York today, who participated in the march, thank you. Please
join me in thanking [much applause].

"Out on the edge of darkness there lies the peace train. [laughter]
Peace train, take this country, come take me home again."  30 years
ago Cat Stevens wrote that song.  And it's interesting how you can
almost hear the rhythms come back at this moment: "Out on the edge of
darkness." We look at the edge of darkness out across this water-I'm
looking at the beautiful illumined gazebo, and I think of what we can
do to send light to the Persian Gulf this evening.

The psalms have a phrase in Latin: "Emitte lucem tuam." Send forth
your light. And we so need to do that at this moment, so that we can
describe the entire Persian Gulf in light this evening, and to send
the light of peace in that region. To take the light of peace which is
in our hearts, and extend that light, and that love and that
compassion. From my studies of the Scriptures and the Gospel of St.
John, it begins, in the early verses, it speaks of the light shining
in the darkness. "And the darkness grasp it not."  Light always shines
in the darkness.  And [what with] darkness has dropped upon our
country, upon our Constitution, upon our highest aspirations for
America, upon our historic traditions-the light of truth will shine in
that darkness, and the darkness will neither comprehend nor overwhelm
it. So we are called upon at this moment, to be witnesses for peace,
for truth, for light, for love, for compassion, and for the potential
of humanity to evolve from a condition where some believe that war is
inevitable, to a condition where our knowledge that peace is
inevitable becomes the defining paradigm of a new century and a new
world.

How do we get to that point. Today we're being offered a competing
vision. One vision holds America as a nation involved in a Manichean
struggle at war with the forces of evil.  Gandhi of course said the
only evil that exists in the world is that which is rattling around in
our own hearts. Yet there are those who have described these images of
evil, and have projected those images, as though on a large screen;
and have tried to vivify them; have created enemies. That philosopher
created by Walt Kelly named Pogo: "We have met the enemy and he is
us!" And so this vision which is emerging from smoke and fire,
digitized visions projected on our television screens today,
phantasmagoria, garish phosphorescence projected into our psyches,
into our hearts, creating despair, creating a vision of the world
disintegrating. Not the first time this has happened in human
experience, but the first time we've seen in coming from our nation
waging an aggressive war. Almost a hundred years ago, William Butler
Yeats described the Second Coming: "Turning and turning, in the
widening gyre, the falcon cannot hear the falconer. All things fall
apart. The center cannot hold." He wrote about an era that presaged
disintegration, that presaged war, not only in Ireland but later on a
world war. And today we're looking at a world where the center is not
holding. Where this world view of America at war is becoming a
doctrine, or reflects and derives from a doctrine, that paradoxically
would be what we expect to secure our country. A national security
strategy which calls for America to be the first to attack. To work
preemptively.  To work alone and apart from the world.  To proceed
unilaterally. Such a doctrine is the product of a world view, which is
compartmentalized, the product of dichotomous thinking, of us versus
them.  And carries with it the ultimate consequence of war.  Because
then, "this town's not big enough for both of us."  And so when might
makes right, what of international law? When might makes right, what
of morality? When might makes right, then the sword shall be the only
measure of justice. The nuclear [posture] review is a continuation of
a national security strategy which calls for first strike use of
nuclear weapons. Reversing 60 years of painstaking efforts toward
nuclear disarmament-nearly 60 years. The doctrine of "Shock and Awe,"
which we're hearing so much about these days, was taken off the shelf
of the National Defense University's war studies program, and
represents a selection of military strategies, all under the title of
"Shock and Awe," which celebrate the various glories and desirability
of Hiroshima, Nagasaki, the Tokyo firebombing, the B-2 bombing of
Vietnam, the idea being that-and I've read the doctrine and I would
urge you all to read it-the idea being that if you can create so much
damage to a civilian population, as the dropping of  the atomic bomb
did in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, that people are just
shocked-psychologically, physically shocked. And they're in awe. What
kind of a world view or vision would want to create a doctrine which
would bring fear to people all over the world. Which would raise fear
to an almost biblical proportion.  Which would make fear on the level
of a deity.

Now we know from our studies of the Hindu religion, that the forces of
destruction and the forces of creation exist simultaneously. Shiva and
Vishnu exist simultaneously. We also know that we have the opportunity
to be able to determine which of those forces [work  through us]: the
forces of destruction or the forces of creation.  Granted, at any
point in our lives, they may be working their way simultaneously.
However, as a nation, America at this very moment has become an agency
of destruction in the world.  As a member of Congress, I've found it
daunting and even heartbreaking to see this process that pulls people
in as though it were some kind of a magnetic pulsation, and causes
people to support war, either through  their active participation or
through their silence. We search for historical antecedents, and we
sometimes find them in chilling ways.  Lately I've been talking to
many historians who draw comparisons to the 1930s.  A world view is
being offered, where will trumps love.  Where what the philosopher
Eric Fromm called the anatomy of human destructiveness is working its
way through official government policy.  Where all of the work to
celebrate the human condition is being trashed in favor of a doctrine
of control.

We know what the darkness looks like. And now lets talk about what the
light that we wish to describe looks like.

The light of peace can be brought into this world and exist in this
world through compassion, acceptance, tolerance that's shared.  And it
's shared through affirming international structures of cooperation
and governance. The importance of a United Nations is so much more
evident at this moment. We realize that we're all connected, that we'
re all one! My politics arises from an holistic world view: we're
interconnected, we're interdependent. What affects me affects you.  It
goes beyond the I-thou of Martin Buber and goes to the connectivity of
"we are all one" that informed Gandhi's essential philosophy.  Because
when you wage war under those circumstances, it is not an act merely
of homicide-it is an act of suicide.  Because we're attacking
ourselves.  Because our brothers and sisters in Iraq are receiving the
bombs. The world [view of vision] of peace can be affirmed through
going back to the work that so many of us have pursued over a lifetime
for nuclear disarmament.  David [Cortwright] and others have made it a
life's work to implement the nonproliferation treaty.  The United
States can once again take a leading role in the world, in working not
only for nuclear nonproliferation, but in taking a leading role in
getting rid of all nuclear weapons. We have an obligation to do that.
We have an obligation to future generations to do that. We have an
obligation to reimplement the antiballistic missle treaty which
Vladimir Putin himself took office ready to support. We have an
obligation to recommit to a test ban.  To begin to build down and
eliminate the production of nuclear weapons.  We're going in an
opposite direction at this very moment, but we can once again gain
that moral authority in the world.  The weapons of mass destruction
begin in our consciousness.  And [they're our/there are] projections
and physical form.  The splitting of the atom was a split in
consciousness in this society. And we need to heal our nation and the
world, through creating a vision of a world as one.  And a vision of
the world as one has no room for nuclear weapons.  There are 12
nations which either possess or are trying to acquire nuclear weapons.
20 nations either possessing or trying to acquire biological weapons.
26 nations either possessing or trying to acquire chemical weapons.
20 nations either possessing or trying to acquire missle technologies
to deliver those weapons.  Pandora's box has been opened.

But there is a power greater than all of those weapons.  And it's the
power of love through which the human heart expresses itself.
[applause] The advancing tide is toward human unity!  We saw it
reflected at the beginning of the new millennium which so many of us
celebrated in the year 2000. Where despite the dire predictions,
people gathered peacefully all around the world, without incidents!
Celebrating our humanity!  Proving that we can get together around the
world peacefully!

The advancing tide is toward human unity, and the technology of our
society has reflected that through the connectivity of the internet,
through communications, through transportation, and through trade.
Every one of us has had the opportunity to connect, in our lifetimes,
with people so we realize that we truly are a global village.  This
thinking that separates us from other nations and other people is
archaic!  And so as we offer a competing vision for the world, that
competing vision can seek to make war itself archaic. [applause]  And
that, my friends, is what has animated the idea of a Department of
Peace.  To take the work of Gandhi, and the work of Dr. King, and the
work of other great religious leaders, and to work to make nonviolence
an organizing principle in our society.

This competing vision, this alternative vision, this light-filled
vision which we offer, looks at our own society with love and with the
understanding that we can be more than we are and better than we are.
We look at the pathologies in our society of domestic violence, of
spousal abuse, of child abuse. Of violence in our schools, of gangs,
of police-community relations challenges, of violence against gays and
violence against all types of minorities.  And we begin to develop
structures within our society to teach children mutuality,
reciprocity, sharing, peace-giving.  Some communities are already
doing that.  To use the very power of government itself to
institutionalize that type of an approach in a society. Think for a
moment how a 400 billion dollar defense budget informs the
consciousness of our nation.  Think for a moment, how spending
anywhere from 99 billion to 1.9 trillion dollars on a war in Iraq,
plus occupation, plus reconstruction, how that would inform the
consciousness of our nation. Think for a moment how the agenda of
America has been set.  Through spending hundreds of billions in a cold
war.  Through spending hundreds of billions in hot wars.  Through
being prepared to spend up to one and a half trillion dollars on a
missle defense system, which doesn't work, and even if it did, we
wouldn't want it to. Think of, instead, offering the possibility of a
structure within our government that would begin to offer another way,
another path. That's what the Department of Peace seeks to do.  On an
international level, it looks at mediation, intervention nonviolently,
it looks at issues of human scarcity, of poverty, and those conditions
which give rise to the kind of despair which produces war.  War is not
inevitable!  Peace is inevitable, but we have to insist on the power
of our humanity to bring forth this new possibility. "Come, my
friends! Tis not too late to seek a newer world!" said the poet
Tennyson. "Come, my friends!  Tis not too late to seek a newer world!"
So while the lights twinkle across this beautiful point, while the
bombs drop, and missles are launched into the city of our brothers and
sisters, we realize that we have this moment in time and space where
we can change the outcome! Where we are not stuck! Where we can use
this power which is inside of us, this light inside of our hearts!
And let that light shine, let it shine in this darkness!  Let it shine
in the chaos! Let it shine-and let that shine so that this alternative
vision of peace, which is the vision of which our lives are made, that
this alternative vision of peace, which can be the vision of which our
country expresses itself, that this alternative vision of peace, that
reflects the lives' work of so many who have come before us, that this
shall be a vision  through which the creativity, and through which the
transformational  energy that will bring us this new world, can be
achieved.

Come my friends, tis not too late to seek a newer world.