The theme of this rally is Beyond War: A New Economy Is Possible – The Legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Continues. I would like to add that a new economy is not only possible, it is absolutely necessary in order for this nation to survive both economically and morally.
Ray McGovern, a former military intelligence officer and CIA analyst of 27 years, started his recent article entitled Welcome To Vietnam, Mr. President with the following statements, "I was wrong. I had been saying that it would be naïve to take too seriously presidential candidate Barack Obama's rhetoric regarding the need to escalate the war in Afghanistan. I kept thinking to myself that when he got briefed on the history of Afghanistan and the oft proven ability of Afghan 'militants' to drive out foreign invaders-from Alexander the Great, to the Persians, the Mongolians, Indians, British, Russians-he would be sure to understand why they call mountainous Afghanistan the 'graveyard of empires.'"

McGovern continues, "And surely he would be fully briefed on the stupidity and deceit that left 58,000 U.S. troops-not to mention 2 to 3 million Vietnamese-dead in Vietnam. John Kennedy became president the year Obama was born. One cannot expect toddler-to-teenager Barack to remember much about the war in Vietnam, and it was probably too early for that searing, controversial experience to have found its way into the history texts as he was growing up."

The US’s addiction to perpetual war, perpetually increasing pentagon budgets including Obama’s recent increase, perpetual stockpiling of nuclear and conventional weapons of mass destruction while telling other nations they can have none, and perpetual prioritizing of empire-building over the needs of the workers and the dispossessed of this country has brought us to our economic and moral knees and will soon wipe us out completely if we, as a people, don’t stand up and demand a more responsive government of, by and for the people.

Many in this country have already died from lack of access to affordable health care. More die every day.

Many students suffer from lack of teaching materials, crumbling schoolhouses and underpaid teachers.

Tens of thousands of Americans go to bed hungry every night, including children and the elderly.

More people become jobless every day while our corporations ship jobs overseas with impunity to boost their bottom lines no matter what the cost to our families and our communities.

Tent cities are popping up all over the country as millions of hard-working families lose their homes to the financial executives who swindled and deceived their way to riches and pulled our economic foundation and the social safety net out from under us.

While our planet heats up to outrageous temperatures that have already caused the loss of some life forms and is causing the polar ice caps to melt even faster than expected, corporate executives pocket tens of millions of taxpayer dollars for having failed miserably at their jobs, all with a wink and a nod from the conspiracy between our two-party political puppets, corporate news anchors, and the financial titans of Wall Street.

What is going on right under our noses is insane, corrupt, indefensible, criminal, unjust, immoral and just plain stupid. All this in the so-called richest and most powerful nation on earth. Something is terribly wrong with this picture.

It’s as if we were about to sit down to a nice dinner of rice and beans and vegetables and all of a sudden a gigantic robotic arm operated by the CIA from an undisclosed location crashes through the roof of our house, smashes our plates and bowls and tables and chairs, steals our food and then takes all these resources, transforms them into ever more lethal devises of death, ships them overseas and kills innocent and destitute civilians in their war-torn communities and nations. Stealing from workers here to kill the poor there while reaping obscene profits in the name of some euphemistic and illusive "national security" while in actuality making us much less safe.

Obama’s escalation in Afghanistan, his bombing of Pakistan and his leaving of many permanent military bases and troops in Iraq legitimizes Bush’s wars. These actions also prolong and exacerbate our deadly serious economic calamity.

We’ve been deceived and betrayed by the slick game-players of the two-party system, their heinous public relations firms and lobbyists, the too-big-to-fail corporate giants and the mainstream media.

The two parties pretend to be oppositional forces but in fact work for and answer to the same war-profiteering corporations that funded their electoral campaigns and got them into cushy positions of power and wealth in the first place.

While defense contractors’ waste, abuse and fraud cannot account for billions of our tax dollars, our elected representatives do not even launch an investigation into where all the money has gone, let alone call for an independent investigation of the causes of our financial collapse or an investigation of the perpetrators of the serial war crimes committed under Bush and continuing under Obama. Of course they don’t want to clean house and investigate. They themselves would be implicated by the evidence and the façade would crumble. Heaven forbid we should have anything but business as usual.

While the war in Iraq continues to cost us over 10 billion dollars a month, a cost that’ll rise even as troops are transferred to Afghanistan, our government refuses to even invite proponents of a single-payer health care system to the table despite the fact that the majority of people these politicians are paid to represent are solidly in favor of such a system.

We not only need to move beyond the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, we need to withdraw all of our troops from all of the 750 US military bases in all 150 countries that we occupy with over a half million military personnel. This would allow the hundreds of billions of dollars each year spent on empire to be used to save lives, improve the quality of life and help millions of homeless, sick, hungry and jobless US citizens right now

The American Empire must be downsized if we are to survive. The Empire will be downsized and pressing domestic needs will take priority only if we take responsibility to insure that it happens.

We must trust our instincts and not allow ourselves to be confounded by the perpetual confusion machine that keeps itself in power by constantly wagging the dog and keeping us distracted from what is truly important and vital while it sells us war after war.

We must keep the pressure on our elected officials, the public servants we pay to represent us and our best interests while they instead plan and fund war after war.

We must do justice to the legacy of Dr. King and continue to educate a bamboozled public by infiltrating the media with a non-stop barrage of letters to editors stating that peace cannot be won with a militaristically aggressive and violent foreign policy.

We must talk with anyone who will listen about the urgency of the situation and the ways in which the powers that be try to keep us powerless and in line.

We must present alternatives to the status quo and speak clearly against the convoluted political psycho-babble and obfuscated mumbo-jumbo of the idiot talking heads that accost us at every turn including so-called progressive organizations and think tanks like MoveOn and The Center For American Progress.

We can and must withdraw from Iraq and Afghanistan now. Rafe Pilgrim, fellow Veterans For Peace member, will tell you exactly how in a matter of weeks that could be done.

US Labor Against The War lists as one of its goals in its mission statement, "To develop and encourage member education that establishes the inherently contradictory relationship between meeting the needs of working people and their communities…and current public policies that keep increasing government spending on the military, operating bases and installations around the world, and investing in military-related production and research of conventional and nuclear weapons systems."

In closing, as MLK stated 42 years ago today, exactly one year before he was assassinated for speaking truth to power, "Tonight… I wish not to speak with Hanoi and the NLF (we can substitute Baghdad or the Taliban), but rather to my fellow Americans, who, with me, bear the greatest responsibility in ending a conflict that has exacted a heavy price on both continents. We are called to speak for the weak, for the voiceless, for victims of our nation and for those it calls enemy, for no document from human hands can make these humans any less our brothers."

Now is the time to act to stop these needless and debilitating wars. Now is the time to prioritize domestic needs at the top of our national agenda.