Democracy Now! December 10, 2002

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Program Title:
Democracy Now! December 10, 2002
Series Title:
PRA Archive #: 
PZ0517.051
Description: 

Today on International Human Rights Day, hundreds of church leaders are marching on the United Nations to call for peace: we talk to Martin Luther King s mentor and civil rights leader, Rev. James Lawson about the role of Christian teaching and the Church in a non-violent peace movement.; Talk-back to war: people call in to Democracy Now! s answering machine; Over 600 gather for the funeral of legendary anti-war activist Philip Berrigan in Baltimore: We hear from historian Howard Zinn and Brendan Walsh, who was arrested with Berrigan in Catonsville, Md. in 1968 for torching military draft cards.

9:00-9:01 Billboard 9:01-9:06 Headlines 9:06-9:07 One Minute Music Break 9:07-9:20: Today is International Human Rights Day. On this day in 1948, the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Then, the world was recovering from World War II, the Holocaust, the rise of Hitler and fascism in Europe, and the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Today, the Bush administration is preparing to unleash another war on the people of Iraq; dozens of prisoners are being held in Guantanemo Bay without access to courts or lawyers; unknown numbers of immigrants have been deported or are in detention in this country; police forces are cracking down on public protests; and everyone in this country is under increasing surveillance by the state. We thought we d take a minute to remember the Declaration. A few excerpts: Article 3: Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person. Article 5: No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. Article 9: No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention or exile. Article 10: Everyone is entitled in full equality to a fair and public hearing by an independent and impartial tribunal, in the determination of his rights and obligations and of any criminal charge against him. Article 12: No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence Article 19: Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media... Article 20: Everyone has the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and association... All over the country, people will be taking to the streets today to protest the looming war in Iraq. Here in New York hundreds religious leaders will be marching on the United Nations. Over fifty are expected to engage in nonviolent civil disobedience. The religious leaders will be challenging the morality of another war in Iraq. Well today we re going to have a discussion on the role of Christian teaching and the Church in the peace movement. We re joined right now by two people from the United Methodist Church the church of President Bush and Vice President Cheney. David Wildman is with the Human Rights & Racial Justice group of the Global Ministries and plans to participate in the march on the UN today. And we re joined by the Reverend James Lawson, a longtime peace advocate and civil rights leader. He is considered to be one of the leading architects of the civil rights movement and a personal tutor on nonviolence to Martin Luther King. His activism began during the Korean War when he was jailed as a conscientious objector. In 1957 he first met Martin Luther King and they soon joined forces to realize their dream of starting a non-violent mass movement. That same year Lawson went to Nashville to teach the mechanics of nonviolence to budding civil rights activists. Lawson continued to work with King until his death but has never given up on their shared dream. For 14 years he served as president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference the organization founded by King to end racial segregation by nonviolent protest. Currently Rev. Lawson is the pastor emeritus at Holman United Methodist Church in Los Angeles. Guest: Rev. J. M. Lawson, Jr., pastor emeritus, Holman United Methodist Church in Los Angeles. Rev. Lawson was a mentor to Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Guest: David Wildman, Executive Secretary, Human Rights & Racial Justice group of the Global Ministries, United Methodist Church Links: United For Peace: http://www.unitedforpeace.org 9:20-9:21 One Minute Music Break 9:21-9:30 CHURCH LEADERS TO MARCH ON UN, CONT D 9:30-9:40 Talk-back to war: people call in to Democracy Now! s answering machine There are over a hundred demonstrations taking place across the country today, on International Human Rights Day. Well, some of the participants decided to give us a call. TAPE: Democracy Now s answering machine, 12/10/02 9:40-9:41 One Minute Music Break 9:41-9:58: Over 600 people packed into the St. Peter Claver Catholic Church on Monday for the funeral of the legendary anti-war and anti-nuclear activist Philip Berrigan. It was the largest gathering of ex cons in the country. Philip Berrigan would have been proud. He died on Friday at the age of 79. Mourners followed a pickup truck carrying a handmade wooden casket from Jonah House to the church. The Rev. John Dear offered the two and a half hour mass. Philip s wife Elizabeth McAlister, a former nun, delivered a Gospel reading about the resurrection of Lazarus. The Rev. Daniel Berrigan, one of four surviving Berrigan brothers, delivered the homily. Brendan Walsh, one of the Catonsville Nine that torched draft records with Berrigan in 1968, gave the eulogy. Many in attendance were Plowshares activists who have been jailed for committing civil disobedience actions with Berrigan by entering military bases and hammering on nuclear warheads to symbolically disarm them. For his crimes Berrigan spent 11 of the past 35 years in prison. Berrigan wrote a final statement in the days before his death. He began dictating a statement the weekend before Thanksgiving. It was all clear - he had it written in his head. Word for word he wrote: "I die in a community including my family, my beloved wife Elizabeth, three great Dominican nuns - Ardeth Platte, Carol Gilbert, and Jackie Hudson (emeritus) jailed in Western Colorado - Susan Crane, friends local, national and even international. They have always been a life-line to me. I die with the conviction, held since 1968 and Catonsville, that nuclear weapons are the scourge of the earth; to mine for them, manufacture them, deploy them, use them, is a curse against God, the human family, and the earth itself. We have already exploded such weapons in Japan in 1945 and the equivalent of them in Iraq in 1991, in Yugoslavia in 1999, and in Afghanistan in 2001. We left a legacy for other people of deadly radioactive isotopes - a prime counterinsurgency measure. For example, the people of Iraq, Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and Pakistan will be battling cancer, mostly from depleted uranium, for decades. In addition, our nuclear adventurism over 57 years has saturated the planet with nuclear garbage from testing, from explosions in high altitudes (four of these), from 103 nuclear power plants, from nuclear weapons factories that can't be cleaned up- and so on. Because of myopic leadership, of greed for possessions, a public chained to corporate media, there has been virtually no response to these realities... Today we will hear from historian Howard Zinn and Brendan Walsh of Baltimore Catholic speaking about Philip Berrigan. Guest: Howard Zinn, retired Boston University professor and author of A People s History of the United States Tape: Brendan Walsh, gave a eulogy for Philip Berrigan. Walsh is cofounder of Viva House, a Catholic Worker house in Baltimore that operates a soup kitchen, food pantry, and free law clinic. Links: Archived Democracy Now! coverage: http://www.democracynow.org/phil.htm 9:58-9:59 Outro and Credits on Leads tape Democracy Now! is produced by Kris Abrams, Mike Burke, Angie Karran, Ana Nogiera and Alex Wolfe. Mike Di Filippo is our music maestro and engineer.

Date Recorded on: 
December 10, 2002
Date Broadcast on: 
December 10, 2002
Item duration: 
59 min.
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Distributor: 
WBAI; Amy Goodman, host., December 10, 2002
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