Time To Say What You Must

The time is past when good men can remain silent, when obedience can segregate man from public risk, when the poor can die without defense.

Now we have been taught to respect the flag, the law and the president, but when the flag runs red with the blood of people it has oppressed, exploited and murdered in the name of freedom and demoracy - that flag deserves to be burned. When law discriminates between rich and poor, white and non-white, well dressed and poorly dressed,...when F.B.I. head J. Edgar Hoover declares that “Justice is incidental to law and order”...such laws and law officers must be disobeyed. And finally when the president and vice-president of the United States makes mockery of the democratic process and the right of free speech, then it is proper for the public to disrupt the reign of such illicit power by referendum, recall, resistance, and revolution.

This sounds like treason, but anything less is traitorous to good consciences. You may guess that this is an urging to oppose and overturn the present government by force....You are correct. We must chastise and replace the idols of violence, militarism, racism, capitalism, and chauvinism with the force of love, brotherhood, justice, and liberation.

Conscientious objection to war is a force of brotherhood for it recognizes the dignity of all men. It believes that man belongs to one community - mankind.

It is a force of justice for it recognizes the lnalienable right of each man to self–determination. It believes that each person has the right to `live according to his customs and traditions without imposing himself on others.
Conscientious objection is a force of liberation for it frees you from the prison that our society has jailed you in. It gives you the liberty to guide your life the way you want.

Conscientious objection is a force of love for it rejects the dehumanization of killing and places the worth of each individual in pre-eminence. Furthermore, it becomes a power that love uses in resistance to oppression and militarism.

The U.S. government states that a conscientious objector is anyone who opposes participation in war “by reason of religious training and belief.” A religious training is simply individual experience supporting belief; a mere background against which sincerity can be tested.

A sincere and meaningful belief which occupies in the life of its possessor a place parallel to that filled by the God of those admittedly qualifying for the exemption comes within the statutory definition. Your own personal moral code can be considered as religious because of the broad interpretation given by the Supreme Court.
The violence must stop today and here! The deaths must stop. The suppression of the truth must stop.

Conscientious objection is a way. There are others. But, im- portantly, THIS WAR STOPS WITH YOU! THE WAR IS OVER WHEN GIS QUIT. (Rap!, no. 4 )

Rap!, no. 4

Library - Reading Room

Time To Say What You Must