U of H Speech at Students United for Peace Rally : Houston Indymedia

A Houston musician named Joseph Jackson, who used to head up the U of H Afro – Cuban Ensemble, died suddenly last year. A few weeks earlier, I was talking to him while we were on a set break at a performance at Café Brasil. We had never talked about anything political before. It was just after 9-11 and I said something about peace with Afghanistan and he said something that kind of alarmed me. He said “these people want to kill all of us.” So I thought he meant all Muslims or something, and I got ready to challenge him about that belief. I asked him “Who wants to kill us all?” He answered, “all these war-makers -- these Republicans and terrorists and all of them. They want to kill us. But they can’t kill the truth.”

I felt a deep connection to him. There are war-makers in this country and elsewhere who want to kill people. Yeah, they want oil, but not unless they get to kill some people too. Yeah they want power and money, but they won’t solve it peacefully no matter what they are offered. They are insisting on war. The CIA told Congress straight-up: Saddam will only become a terrorist threat to US civilians if we attack him. And Congress decided “ok, let’s attack anyway.” Not just Republicans, Democrats too, they want to kill you guys. But not Sheila Jackson Lee, she stood up for peace, and we need to keep thanking her for her brave stand.

And these war-makers want your money too. This war is supposed to cost up to Three Trillion dollars. They already spend half the budget on war. Imagine if you had a friend, who spent half his paycheck on guns and security guards and alarm systems and stuff. He was making several hundred bucks a week and half of it went into weapons and security. And out of the other half he’d be trying to pay off his rent and his debt on his credit cards for weapons he bought in the past, but he wouldn’t even have enough for food or medical insurance. You’d ask why and he’d say, “the robbers and killers want to attack me.” And you’d look at his house with all the burglar bars and the sentries walking back and forth and he’d be in there behind the bullet-proof glass heating up a ramen noodles. And you’d call up to him “Hey bro! This is a lot to spend on security” and he’d shout down “yeah maybe so, but I got to spend 9 times more than I am currently spending to deal with this new threat.” And you answer “but, you don’t have enough money for that.” And he’d answer “I’ll go into more debt if I have to.”

After 9-11 the whole world thought of us as victims. Now the whole world thinks we’re nuts. And we are. I went to see US Representative Culberson with my friends at his town hall meeting and ask him some tough questions about the war. And he sounded like a lunatic. We asked him how we could afford a three trillion dollar war when we can’t even pay for health care for our own people. He said that it is quite possible that during the time it took to ask that question that Saddam developed a delivery system to blow up our families here in Houston. This guy is nuts. Then he said “you don’t need health care if you’re dead.” This is not some late night talk radio maniac, this is our Representative from Spring Branch. He wants to kill people in Iraq and make them want to kill all of us more.

We’re not going to be able to travel anywhere without people wanting to attack us for being so self-centered Americans, because we are responsible for these war-makers. These war-makers are messing up your semester abroad. The people in other countries are wanting to kick our asses. They probably want to vote too. They probably think, man if the President of the US gets to decide what happens to the whole world, then why don’t we get to vote. And these US war-makers just pull out of missile treaties and refuse to sign the chemical and biological weapons ban. That is straight up terrorism.

This is your future that these war-makers are giving up. This is our lifetimes and we want to pass on a planet to our children and grandchildren. Not a scorched landscape of radioactive debris. But a whole planet. We got to work together and stop these maniacs that somehow got in charge and stop this nonsense. We can’t possibly have too many more chances to get this right. It’s our fault we didn’t stop them a long time ago, but we got to stop them now. School and work and love and happiness are all important ways to spend our time. What would we be fighting for if not for the ways we spend our lives. But it’s not a time for living without struggle against these war-makers. We must spend every minute we can saving the future of life on Earth from this maniacs, these war-makers, they are stealing our lives.