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Dear Peacemakers and Satyagrahis

Monday is Presidents Day.  President Kennedy gave the extraordinary speech linked below (see blue link).  It makes clear how far ahead of other American politicians he was.  Several scholars, including James Douglass, believe this speech spurred the conspiracy to assassinate him.  I pray you might take time to read it and reflect on it. 

The following message is from Massachsetts Peace Action.  They are an extremely active and impressive source of much excellent thought and education.

Pace e beneLorin, Lorin

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Also below is a brief essay we have drafted about the JFK speech timed for President's Day. If you like it, please consider sending it on to others, encouraging them to share it as well. Who knows, with six degrees of separation a lot of people might see it and take up what is suggested. We are planning to submit it as an op-ed to a local newspaper, and you are free to co-sign and submit it locally as well. Better still you might want to write your own op-ed and submit it. If there are any ideas or parts below you want to steal, feel free.

We look forward to seeing you. Best wishes, Amar Amad and Marty Schotz

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PEACE AND PRESIDENT'S DAY

The Buddhist have a saying -- "When the people are ready, the leader will arise."   But what happens if the leader arises before the people are ready.  The United States once had a President who made a radical turn toward world peace -- "not the peace of  a 'Pax Americana' enforced on the world by weapons of war",   but the "genuine peace that makes life worth living and allows people and nations to  build a better life for their children... not merely peace for Americans but peace for all men and women..."  

He imagined not "a revolution in human nature, but an evolution in human institutions."  He understood that there is  "no simple key, no magic formula.... genuine peace is a product of many nations and the sum of many acts.  It must be dynamic, not static, changing to meet new challenges.  Peace is a process -- a way of solving problems.  World peace, like community peace, doesn't require that everyone love their neighbors, but instead requires a willingness to live together in mutual tolerance, submitting disputes to a just peaceful settlement."

He knew that this would be a long slow process, but he began taking our nation on that path.  On June 10, 1963 President John F. Kennedy delivered a speech at American University in which he outlined his ideas about peace and how to step out of the arms race and the cold war thinking, in which our society was steeped.  His speech is every bit as relevant today as it was more than a half century ago -- testimony to how true his words were.  In this speech President Kennedy urged us to re-examine our attitudes toward world peace, our attitudes toward Russia and the Cold War, and our attitudes toward peace and freedom here at home.    He did not just speak.  He began to act and the world began to witness tangible results in the form of peaceful cooperation between the United States and the then Soviet Union.

At the end of President Kennedy's speech, he says, "And is not peace, in the last analysis, basically a matter of human rights -- the right to live our lives without fear of devastation -- the right to breathe air as nature provided it -- the right of future generations to a healthy existence."

And then he was taken away.....   

And we as a people weren't ready to take up his ideas, continue his efforts, and make them our reality.

"... the right to live our lives without fear of devastation -- the right to breathe air as nature provided it -- the right of future generations to a healthy existence."

None of these rights can be achieved, none of these major problems facing humanity can be solved without peace.  Our children need us to recognize this.  Our children need us to start truly educating ourselves about peace and organizing ourselves to see that we have it. 

One step we can take this President's Day, Monday February 21st,  is to sit down with family, friends, and neighbors and listen to and/or read President Kennedy American University speech. 

https://ratical.org/ratville/JFK/HWNAU/JFK061063.html

We can examine that speech.  We can reach out to a local peace group, and see what contribution each of us can make to realizing the President's ideas.   This would be part of our getting ready.