On Sunday, October 9, 2011, nearly
200 mid-Missouri residents gathered at Courthouse Square for "ENOUGH!
Stand for Peace & Justice," a peace rally marking the 10th
anniversary of the U.S. war in Afghanistan. Below are prepared remarks
that Peaceworks Steering Committee member and GRO organizer Lily Tinker Fortel delivered at the rally:
Good afternoon. It
is good to be with you as we mark this tragic occasion.
Today, I will be talking about the concept of a peace
economy and discussing how we can move forward toward our vision of a peaceful
and just world –one that puts people before profits in all aspects of life, and
builds unity by embracing an understanding of we.
Today, not just in Columbia, people are coming together to
mark the tenth anniversary of the War on Afghanistan. We are calling for an end to war and standing together, honoring
a vision of a peaceful future. What
makes this war anniversary different from others over the course of the past
ten years is, of course, the Occupy Movement.
Right now and for the past three weeks, people all over the world are
standing up together - against corporate control of our political and economic
systems – and demanding fundamental change.
It is no wonder that this has happened. For too long now, it has become increasingly
clear that the nature of the for-profit, government dominating corporate model
is neither sustainable nor peaceful nor just.
Here are some of the symptoms that illustrate just how ill our society
has become: Cuts to funding of basic domestic programs – education, maintenance
of public infrastructure; proposed cuts to social insurance programs – Social
Security, Medicare, Medicaid; big box stores ruining local economies and not
paying living wages to employees; corporatization and delocalization of food
sources; lack of access to quality health care; high jobless rates; the
ever-increasing wealth gap between the richest and poorest, high homicide and
imprisonment rates, increasing numbers of Americans living in poverty – 43
million, now – And of course, the specific tie-in to this afternoon is that our
country is engaging in three active wars – spending nearly $500 million each
day, $3.5 billion each week on those wars– and we are still manufacturing
weapons and maintaining 865 foreign military bases.
All of these things are failures of a system that places
profits before people. The current economy is based on a corporate model, which
allows a very, very few to accumulate excessive material wealth and secure
political power at the expense of the masses.
The “success” of the current economy is based on American Dream
consumerism - money and thing accumulation – and denies any concept that the
wellbeing of the individual is inherently connected to, and dependent upon, the
wellbeing of the collective. This
“success” is dependent upon the extent to we see ourselves as divided. Of
course, the failures of this “successful” system extend to and are most
blatantly exposed in the form of corporate control and dominance of
government. So, taking all these things
into consideration, we might say this moment – this surge of energy – has been
a long time in the making. Click to READ MORE
