BLACK ANTI-WAR MOVEMENT LAUNCHED
AT THE HOUSE OF THE LORD CHURCH

"Many churches call themselves House of the Lord," folks have said. "But Rev. Herbert Daughtry's truly is the House of the Lord Church!" That statement was sure lived up to on a recent evening as the Martin Luther King Jr. Peace Now Committee, founded by Rev. Daughtry, joined forces with Act Now to Stop War and End Racism (ANSWER) to hold one of the first major anti-war-on-Iraq events in New York's African American community. It was a beautiful sight to see well over 1,000 Black, Latino, Asian and White, older and younger people pack the main floor and balcony as well as the lower level of the church, all coming together to demand of the United States government, "Wage War on Poverty & Racism - Not on Iraq!"

As Congresswoman Cynthia McKinny stated in her message, "It is fitting, appropriate and just that we bring our activism for peace and against war to The Church. For it is The Church where America's conscience resides." And she spoke of earlier struggles in history where it was "the Black church in particular which helped America find its soul."

The evening's roster of powerful speakers began with ANSWER's Larry Holmes, who said, "It is a kind of a war crime in and of itself that they're going to spend billions of dollars on this war at a time when they're closing senior citizen centers and limiting Meals on Wheels, raising tuition at CUNY and shutting down many homeless services. At the same time, there's all this money being wasted on murder! It's a crime!"

He told about the mass anti-war rally that the MLK Jr. Peace Now Committee and ANSWER will hold in Washington, DC on Saturday, January 18^th to mark Martin Luther King's birthday. "King believed it was impossible to wage war on poverty while waging war on Vietnam," Holmes said. "The same is true about Bush's war on Iraq. We must make our voices heard!"

Former US Attorney Ramsey Clark went on to spell out some of the almost inconceivable atrocities already committed by this country against the land and people of Iraq. For one thing, under George Bush Sr.'s initial assault, 110,000 bombs were dropped on them. "That's one every 30 seconds every minute, every hour, every day for 42 days," he said. It is the equivalent of 7 and 1/2 Hiroshimas."

Clark explained, too, that by 1996, 575,000 children under the age of 5 had already died of deaths directly resulting from our manufactured and forced poverty in Iraq. And he said that this government manufactures poverty everywhere in the globe - including in Brooklyn, upper Manhattan, all over the country. "Some of the worst poverty in this hemisphere is on the Pine Ridge Reservation of South Dakota," he said. "The only people more impoverished are people in Haiti who are the poorest of any nation in this hemisphere because of us. We use our power to impoverish people all over the world.

"There's only one power left that can prevent another ungodly assault on Iraq," Clark stated. "It's the power of the people. People have to stand up and take to the streets. We have to persevere until the government acts in accordance with the will of the people!"

Among the diverse speakers heard that night was the Rev. Paul Mayer from the New York City Forum of Concerned Religious Leaders. As a person who escaped from Nazi Germany, he said he's never before felt an atmosphere closer to the one that swept Germany during the rise of fascism.

He talked of the Total Information Awareness surveillance which, if it goes through, will result in the following: Every purchase you make with a credit card, every magazine subscription or book you check out of the library or buy and medical prescription you fill, every website you visit and e-mail you send or receive, every academic grade you receive, every bank deposit or trip you make and every event you attend will go into what the Defense Department describes as "a virtual, centralized grand database." "This is more than even the great dictators were able to carry out because they didn't have the tools necessary for it," he said.

Jasmin Cruz, one of the people who helped organize the recent Youth Walk-Out in which tens of thousands of New York students walked out of school to protest the war, spoke on behalf of Student ANSWER. She talked of the key place youth hold in the struggle and of how crucial it is that young people make their voices heard.

Importantly, Viola Plummer from the December 12 Movement spoke about the relation of the US government's plans to make war on Iraq and their desire to justify attacking Zimbabwe. She brought people to their feet as she ended with "No war in Iraq! No war in Zimbabwe! Free the land!"

Councilman Charles Barron, too, brought down the house as he told the audience, "I'm going to talk about terrorism. When you pay your tax dollars to a police force for protection and they shoot at you 41 times and hit you 19 times, that is terrorism. When a person can say to a city that your children don't deserve anything more than an 8^th grade education and then be re-elected governor, that is terrorism. When you can see a grandmother, Eleanor Bumpers, just 30 days behind in her rent and they bring a shot gun as well as an eviction notice and murder her, that is terrorism. The fact that we can move into the 21^st century and have Native American reservations, Black ghettos, Latino barrios and a mayor cutting social services like day care centers, that is terrorism."

Barron also said that we all know that Black and Latino youth are going to be the cannon fodder for this war. "It's a war for oil that has nothing really to do with Saddam Hussein. It's only going to create more enemies who hate us and an America that will not be safe for anyone," he stated. "So we must stop this war at all cost!"

The entire evening, which was tremendously moving and educational, marked only the beginning of the collaboration of these 2 fine organizations. For further information, including about the Sunday, December 15^th New York Area Anti-War Organizing Meeting from 4 to 7 PM at the House of the Lord Church, call the MLK Jr. Peace Now Committee at (718) 596-1991 or NY ANSWER at (212) 633-6646.