“Wake Up Everybody! Start to Build a New Day!” (1)
October 29, 2005 - Africa Action Baraza 2005
by Jim Winkler
My name is Jim Winkler and I serve as general secretary of the United Methodist General Board of Church & Society. My denomination is the 3rd-largest in the United States and includes President Bush, Vice-President Cheney, and Senator Clinton among our members. I am a member of the board of Africa Action and am happy to be here this morning with all of you.
Two days ago, Executive Director Salih Booker and the staff provided to the board updates on Africa Action’s campaigns to stop genocide in Darfur, cancel Africa’s debt, and fight HIV/AIDS. These campaign priorities mirror those of my church as well. I mention that because I suspect—no, I’m going to presume--all of us gathered here this morning represent or are committed to progressive causes.
Our efforts have brought dramatic change to the United States and, indeed, to the entire world over the past 50 years. We are the backbone of the civil rights movement, the movement for women’s rights, the anti-nuclear weapons movement, the movements against the Vietnam War and the invasion and conquest of Iraq. We are behind the environmental justice movement and the movements for freedom and equality for all people. We strongly supported the struggle against apartheid and the fight for the rights of immigrants and migrant laborers. We pushed for the end of colonial rule in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. All of these causes are moral and spiritual at their core.
I remember nearly 20 years ago when I designed and led educational experiences for our United Methodist Seminars on National and International Affairs program. At that time, South Africa still lived under the apartheid system and the racist South African government was considered a solid ally of the United States of America. Nelson Mandela was in prison on the charge of treason for opposing the vicious dictatorship. A congressman named Dick Cheney voted against a Congressional resolution calling for his release on the false grounds Mandela was a communist. Some of you may remember those times.
One day, a United Methodist pastor called me to say he wanted to bring his youth group to our offices at the Church Center for the United Nations so that they might have a better understanding of what was happening in South Africa. He told me he didn’t want the seminar to be biased. I told him I could not design such a seminar for him. I guaranteed him his group would be exposed to a variety of points of view including that of the South African government, but I told him The United Methodist Church considered apartheid to be a heresy and a sin against God. Yes, I told him, we are biased.
Let us consider the long sweep of history. We have changed the world for the better. Yet, our fight goes on. I believe people in this country want to live just, authentic, spiritual lives. People do not want to wear tennis shoes made in sweatshops in southeast Asia. They do not wish to drink coffee grown on land in Central America that ought to be feeding its hungry people; they do not desire to pump pollution into their own bodies and those of their children. However, many, if not most, of us do these things every day.
We are in the midst of a profound crisis. How do we get out of it? Our solutions must be as practical as possible for ordinary people. I know us progressives attempt to change our buying habits and daily practices and that does have an effect, but we need for millions upon millions of people to be living in such a way so as to sustain the earth and its peoples.
People will drink fair trade coffee and recycle and drive more fuel-efficient vehicles. I believe people are willing to change and sacrifice for the common good and their children’s futures if there is a vision of hope offered to them based on a realistic program set forth for a better world. People want social justice; they just don’t know how to get it.
Why is there such opposition to the progress we have made? Fear and money, obviously. The Religious Right has perfected the language of persecution. Yet the Religious Right is made up mostly of white Americans, the most powerful group of people ever to stride the face of the earth. I know; I’m a WASP. Although I grew up in an anti-war, pro-Civil Rights family, the message the culture sends to me as a white American male is that I rightfully own and control the planet militarily, socially, culturally, and economically.
The writer and commentator, Gore Vidal, was asked a few years ago why the United States had moved to the right? He answered that any country built on the backs of slaves on land stolen from its native peoples is by definition a right-wing country.
So how do we move forward? Ours is the first generation in human history with the capacity to feed all the world’s population; to provide housing, education, and health care for everyone; to combat disease, hunger, and poverty. The World Bank estimates it would cost about $15 billion a year to provide universal primary education for children in 88 developing countries. The World Health Organization says it would cost $21 billion a year to provide basic health care for people in those same countries. The Food and Agricultural Organization estimates $6 billion a year would provide school lunches for children in the 44 poorest countries. Why aren’t we providing health care and primary education and school lunches? St. Luke reminds us that from everyone to whom much has been given, much will be required. And from the one to whom much has been entrusted, even more will be demanded.
How do we end terrorism? Meeting the needs of people around the world as well as here in the United States will be infinitely more effective than all the bombs and bullets and tanks and war planes we can ever build!
Although some might say it is not directly related to Africa, I would contend we must be steadfast in our opposition to the disastrous war in Iraq and the doctrine of preemptive war on which it is based. Even those who approve of the war have to be ashamed at the colossal stupidity of the planning, or lack thereof, involved in the war. And the sheer breadth and depth of the lies that this was based on are monumental in scope. One of those great lies does directly touch on Africa and that is the fiction that Iraq attempted to purchase uranium from Niger.
World oil production will peak soon, never to increase again. Demand will continue to increase. Without a shift to new sustainable sources of energy and a dramatic change in our daily lives in the industrialized countries, disaster awaits. Africa will not be spared. This war is about oil. It is about securing Iraq’s oil fields for our use. It is about stopping other nations from getting what we want. It is about killing those who get in our way. Ending the war in Iraq is not just the right thing to do; it is absolutely necessary for us to move toward a better future. As for weapons of mass destruction, I do not want any nation or group to possess them. Is it unthinkable for the President of the United States to articulate that vision? Let us insist the moral and spiritual responsibility of our leaders is to embrace and work for a world without any weapons of mass destruction anywhere.
There is so much to be done and I am happy that I am connected to Africa Action to work for justice and peace. It often appears we face terrible crises and today is no exception. The burden of debt on African nations, the killing in Darfur, the HIV/AIDS pandemic, not to mention other disasters sometimes seem to overwhelm us. But we have changed the world already. We do fight against wicked, even evil, forces. They are the institutions and nations that carried out the slave trade and colonized Africa and steal its resources and kill its people today.
WEB DuBois reminded us that, "Mighty causes are calling us. The freeing of women, the training of children, the putting down of hate and murder and poverty—all these and more, but they call with voices that will mean work and sacrifice and even death." There is no one I would rather be fighting alongside than those of you with me here in this room today!
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