DENNIS KUCINICH: First of all, I want to thank you for the invitation to join and to thank each one of you for your personal commitment for peace and social and economic justice. The journey that each one of you took to this moment is honored; and I’m grateful to participate if only for a few minutes.

I keep going back to this point—it’s like we need a new language to describe the horror that’s going on—but justifications, rationalizations that have been made cry out for our response. The political system has been bought unfortunately, and there are not many people who can go to the media who are inside the government to protest what’s going on in Gaza in particular. So, we have this anesthetizing, a kind of numbness that has taken place. People are still breaking through, groups of people around the country and certainly around the world are going to the streets. And I think ultimately that’s the kind of nonviolent action that will help tip the balance. It was when students in particular went into the streets during the Vietnam War that Lyndon Johnson decided that he couldn’t defend it anymore, and he stepped down. Of course Nixon and Kissinger kept it going for quite a few more years, but the ferment that was out there in the country helped to force a reconsideration of America’s role.

But here we are again—the mass violence. You had Vietnam, Iraq, Gaza, and it’s an arc of inhumanity in our country. In the United States—I know there are people on this call from outside the States—but the United States is a principal initiator of this. So, we have a lot of work to do inside our own country. It’s not just at the policy level; even before we get to the policy level we have to think about the consciousness from which these murderous policies are derived. That’s a shift that takes place through the instrumentality of our own beings and speaking out and gathering people; and that’s why I say thanks for what the IPC is doing and for all those of you who do this work. Any way that I can be of assistance to what you’re trying to do, tell me.

ANASTASIA BATTLE: Thank you so much Mr. Kucinich for that. I know Ray McGovern is so excited to have you on; he really wanted you on today. I know your time is limited—

KUCINICH: Well, Ray is one of my heroes, so it’s great to be with you.

BATTLE: Wonderful! We wanted to make sure if you were available, if you could stay a little bit to hear what he had to say, and then you guys could have a conversation.

KUCINICH: You know, I’d love to hear what Ray has to say, and then I would say I can push things back here; just let me do a quick text. I’m good until 11:40 Eastern time, so yes, Ray, go ahead.

RAY MCGOVERN: What a gift to have all these Dennises on there; all three of them, especially my friend Dennis Kucinich, who is probably the direct successor of my real hero, and that was John F. Kennedy; a man of peace, but a man of courage and a man of justice. And that’s what I want to talk about now. We come out of the same faith tradition, and that means a lot to me as well. I noticed that Father Bury is going to be on, and Jack Gilroy; my God, we’ve got a bunch of macro-snappers on here. A bunch of Roman Catholics coming out of a wider ecumenical tradition, and I stress that.

Francis is dead. What did Francis do about Gaza? Francis made pious statements about Gaza. His most “specific” statement was, “You know, I’m told by my advisors that a lot of people think that there might be a genocide going on there in Gaza, so I think we should have an investigation.” This is months after the world court had already indicted Netanyahu and Gallant. It reminds me of World War II and Pius XII, who couldn’t find his voice. There are structural indignities no matter what Francis may have wanted to do, he didn’t do it; that’s my reality. He’s a nice guy; he’s a mensch, OK? But when my webmeister put my little article up about this, he said, “Nice guys don’t win ballgames, and nice guys don’t stop genocide.”

What’s the bottom line here? Well, it’s good news and it’s bad news. It’s up to us; and that’s just good news, because we’re up to it.

Let’s go back a ways. Yahweh to Cain after he had murdered his brother. “So, Cain, where’s your brother?” “How am I supposed to know? It’s none of my damn business?” Or, more faithful to the text, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” Well, I think the people on this call are brothers’ and sisters’ keepers; and those people in Gaza are very much in need of our help right now. So, we have that witness there from the Bible story, we also have my favorite rabbi, Rabbi Abraham Heschel, who famously said, “When injustice takes place, few are guilty, but all are responsible. Indifference to evil”—look at Cain for example. Who cares about me? Who cares about my brother?—“Indifference to evil is more insidious than evil itself.” Abraham Heschel, very active during the Vietnam days and so forth.

Who else? Well, how bad is it in Gaza? There was an Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who actually ministered to Nelson Mandela, and knew apartheid in South Africa back and forth, right? What did Tutu say when he was asked, “Could you compare apartheid in South Africa and apartheid in Palestine?” He said, “Yeah, of course I can compare that.” Here’s what it is. “Life in Palestine is far more brutal and repressive than in apartheid South Africa.” And my friends, that was before the genocide.

Now, I often quote a fellow named Albert Camus, and you know the story if you’ve been listening to these things about how he talked to the Dominicans about the absence of a voice from Rome during World War II. To me, an agnostic? A voice from Rome? Yeah! Then I was told there was an encyclical. I said, “What’s an encyclical?” Then he said, what has to happen is that the voice has to come through loud and clear so the simplest man or woman can understand it; and that’s not enough. What he also said to a friend, during the height of the war in 1943, “It is the job of thinking people not to be on the side of the executioners.” He got the Nobel prize in 1957, where he expressed “the hope that the quality of the new generation and its increased unwillingness to adopt slogans or ideologies and return to a more tangible value system. We have nothing to lose,” says Camus, “except everything. So, let’s go ahead. This is the wager of our generation.” We could be led by people like Dennis Kucinich. “If we are to fail, it is better in any case to have stood on the side of those who refused to be dogs, and are resolved to pay the price that must be paid so that men and women can be more than dogs.”

Lastly from Camus, in 1943, a letter exchange with a young German who was very proud. He was going to make Germany great again. OK, comparisons are invidious, but these are his words. “You told me that the greatness of my country, Germany, is beyond price,” this young fellow wrote. “Anything is good that contributes to its greatness. Those who, like us young Germans, are lucky enough to find a meaning in the destiny of our nation, must sacrifice everything else.” 1943; already we knew the genocide was going on. “No,” says Camus, “I told you, I cannot believe that everything must be subordinate to a single end. There are means that cannot be excused, and I should like to be able to say I love my country and still love justice. I don’t want for my country a greatness born of blood and falsehood. I want to keep it alive, and keep justice alive.”

I want to finish here quickly by just referring to things that happened more recently. Let me talk about Heschel again. He was at Selma; he marched in all kinds of justice processions and demonstrations. This is what he said. “For many of us, the march from Selma to Montgomery was about protest and prayer. Lakes are not lips, and walking is not kneeling. And yet, our legs uttered songs. Even without words, our march was worship. I felt my legs were praying, or my legs were demonstrating.”

How about a more recent one? One of my favorite theologians is Annie Dillard. Here’s what she said: “It’s really up to us. There never has been any other; not Popes, not any, not moral leaders that could exert leadership…. There are enough of us, but what we need to do is amass half-dressed in long lines like tribesmen and shake our gourds at each other to wake up. Instead, we watch television and miss the show.”

OK, I’ll go back to a biblical story, and I’ll talk about Isaiah; something most people don’t know. Did you know that he walked around for two years stark naked? Well, it’s in the Bible, folks; look it up. What was he trying to say? He was trying to garner attention to himself. People said, “Oh, that’s awful! You’re stark naked.” And what he said was, “I stripped myself of clothes. You are stripped of the gifts given you by Yahweh. The vision of justice and shalom.” Shalom is nothing more in the Biblical sense than the existence, the presence of justice. So, we can have peace, but we have to have justice first.

Last thing I’ll say is that we have to keep our heads on straight and look at the benefits of being in solidarity with one another. I used to say when I’d speak, “Look around you, for God’s sake! How can you not be encouraged with such fine companions in this struggle?” One of the consolations for me was that I have Stone. He warns us, he says, “Look, the only kinds of fights worth fighting are those that you can lose, because somebody has to fight them. And somebody has to lose, and lose, and lose until someday, somebody who believes as you do, wins.” Well, in the process, we have to keep our sense of humor and have some fun. A friend of mine was a priest and had a brother who was a priest and they both came back to their Irish mother and talked about all the dogma they had learned. She said, “Tell me now, was there any fun at this meeting of yours?” They were stunned; because they realized that without some fun, nothing is going to happen.

So, let’s be justice people, let’s have some fun; but let’s stick with it, as Dennis Kucinich and many of you have already done. Thanks for letting me speak.

BATTLE: Thank you, Ray! Mr. Kucinich, if you want to say anything?

KUCINICH: I want to thank Ray as well for that erudite presentation. It is on us. What I’m doing right now is writing; I post on substack if you get a chance to go to denniskucinich@substack you can get a free subscription. I’m writing exactly about these topics we’re concerned with.

Thank you for the work that all of you do. Thanks again, Ray. And I’ll look forward to seeing you, joining you again. Keep going! Thank you.

MCGOVERN: Wish me luck; and those of you who are praying types, please hold me in the light. This afternoon I’m going to Moscow together with Oliver Stone. We have several meetings and panels set up. And best of all, we’ll be there at the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II, when we were allies. We want to stress that we were allies then. John Kennedy, in his wonderful peace speech, said that almost alone among major powers in the world, the U.S. and Russia have never been at war. We’re going to try to speak and spread the word around. Maybe some of it will come back to the U.S. as well. But the idea is that this is something to celebrate; it is the possibility that this fellow Steve Witkoff, who’s in Moscow as we speak and just finished talking to Putin, will have some good news for us. I think that’s where the game is being played. So, wish me luck, and I probably will not be able to join you next week, but I’ll be with you in spirit.

DENNIS SMALL: I do have one piece of advice for you, Ray, for your trip. Have fun!

MCGOVERN: Perfect! OK, on that note, thanks very much folks.

A little bit later:

FATHER HARRY BURY: What is really significant to me is that Helga has been arguing about the importance of seeing people as all good. And the Holy Father, Pope Francis, treated people as all good. One of the reasons for the conflict in the world, it seems to me, is because we misunderstand what justice is about. We think that justice is vengeance. So, we think that the way to end evil-doing, to prevent people from doing bad things, is by punishment. And punishment is violence; and when you use violence, you lead to vengeance. And that’s what we are experiencing, and both Helga and Pope Francis have argued against that.

And the Oasis Plan calls for equity; that means to treat everybody equally. So, the Schiller Institute and Pope Francis were speaking the same message. And I hope that people have begun to understand that; that the reason people all over the world have liked Pope Francis is because he thinks of the people on the margins. And there wouldn’t be any people on the margins if we had the Oasis Plan in which we get peace through development. So, it’s important for me anyway, to understand and to promote the Oasis Plan because it’s in the spirit of Pope Francis. Thank you.

DENNIS SPEED: Thank you, Father Bury. Let me just say something, because many people who will be on will not know this about you. I will just read something from his biography.

“Father Bury’s activism started as a new priest, serving at the University of Minnesota’s Newman Center in the 1960s, when young Catholic men asked him to write letters for them as Conscientious Objectors for the Vietnam War. In 1971, at the request of some Vietnamese, he and three others chained themselves to the U.S. Embassy gate in Saigon to protest the Vietnam War.”

So, that was not a protest here that Anastasia was referring to. That’s a protest in Saigon in the 1970s. That’s very much in the Rabbi Heschel mode. Then in 2005, he was in Gaza, serving as a human shield, when he was temporarily abducted at that point. So, this is a man who clearly has done exactly what Ray McGovern was talking about before. We’re always honored to have him with us, and we are particularly honored about his clear idea about the Oasis Plan that has been put forward and will be being discussed by the way at our conference.

So, Father Bury, I just wanted to make sure you got recognized for that. And thank you again, very much for your remarks.

BATTLE: Next I’d like to go to Carolina from Mexico. She has a report on the youth recruitment process. As has been reported over the last few weeks, we’ve been making a huge effort going into the May conference to go to universities, places where many young people are, to get them active. Mexico in particular has had quite a bit of traction. So, we’re happy to have Carolina Dominguez on to give her report.

CAROLINA DOMINGUEZ: I want to tell you about the activities we have not only in Mexico, but in Ibero-America. I want to start first by mentioning something that has helped us in the work with the youth. This document that I want to mention is a book by Martin Luther King called Why We Can’t Wait. It’s a very extraordinary book that I recommend to everybody. He dedicates it to his children, but in his Foreword, he says that he hopes that in the future his children will be judged not by the color of their skin, but by their character and their actions.

In this book, he presents the famous letter he wrote in the Birmingham Jail, in which he answers the critics in his collaborators who said his actions were not correct, and that was why he was in jail. He says something very funny. He says, I don’t answer to my critics, because if I do, I will not be able to do anything. What is important are the actions, and in that sense he responds to something that for us has been fundamental—work with youth. It’s the concept of nonviolent action. His response is that while they have to do demonstrations and activities, he says the best way to come to agreements is through negotiation. Martin Luther King says that is true, but when the leadership doesn’t want to negotiate because they don’t consider what the other side is presenting is important, we need to provoke that negotiation; provoke a tension. That’s what he’s talking about in creating tension through direct action. The individual has to be clear that he’s not in agreement with what is going on. Morally, the individual has to be very clear that what is occurring is not what he believes in; he has to be very clear on that not only in his heart, but in society. Those nonviolent actions create a tension that allows them to be heard.

That for us is very important because of course many people consider that our mobilization or demonstration or some action to be in disagreement with the ideas has to be violent, but not the idea that this will open the way for a proposal. What we are doing with the international youth movement, not only in Mexico and Ibero-America, but internationally before with the leadership of Lyndon LaRouche and now with Helga Zepp-LaRouche, we are doing precisely that. We are generating that tension, not to use youth as scapegoats as is being done with the wars and political parties using them during the elections; where afterwards they are just discarded.

In the Schiller Institute we have a constant campaign of education in profound ideas that allow the youth to become leaders. Those ideas involve economic proposals. In that process of working with the youth, you first have to understand that they need a level that allows them to heard. The youth have a lot of potential; not only because of their age, but because they are taking decisions about their moral quality for the long term. We need to provide them with the tools so that when they decide the moral quality of the path they choose, they will have sufficient knowledge to do what is right.

In that work with the youth, we are having international meetings and dialogues which include representatives from Colombia, Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, Europe, and the United States. They are presenting their concerns about the situation today. Of course, they don’t want a war, but they don’t see any options for what they can give to society. We just had an international youth dialogue last week where they presented several proposals about energy, kinds of jobs youth will have, what they can do in order to change the situation. They were very open and had basic questions that should be answered. I want to say that when we are generating this tension, when some Congressman or leader says “OK, I will listen to you,” what do you have to tell them? We need to be ready with what we are going to say, because there is a state of tension. We have to have those proposals, and the youth have to know how to change the economy. That’s why we have these youth dialogues. That’s why we are working with them on what an economy is; that it has to give value to people; because the main product in an economy is people. LaRouche said the main thing that moves the economy is creativity; the ideas that are generated by individuals who want to make things better. So when they are talking to a leader, and they say “What do you have to tell me?”; they have to be very clear that what we are presenting is what will work for the economy. That’s what we are teaching the youth: what is productivity; what is an economy. It has been very polemical. We have heard about this in these meetings. What is the best type of energy that can work for their countries; what kind of jobs? We think this has been very optimistic. The youth meeting was very good, because people were able to express how things were going and their proposals.

I thought it was very funny the types of problems we have with the youth. There was one young man from Brazil who will go from Brazil to the New York conference in May. The interpreters were translating from English to Spanish, but there was a moment when he started to speak in Portuguese. It was very funny, because we were all quiet; there was no way to interpret his words from Portuguese into Spanish or English. That changed the geometry of the meeting; thinking about how we can hear the proposals of young people from Ibero-America in their language, and how we can transmit these ideas to other young people in the world. Those are the types of topics we want to address in this youth dialogue; how we can answer what they are presenting and what we are doing.

We are having these meetings all the time, especially with Helga. This time we had the participation of Megan Dobrodt and Jason Ross. It was very productive and there was a lot of optimism that through this work with the youth, as Martin Luther King said, we are doing it because it’s necessary and the people who are criticizing that he was creating this tension don’t understand.

I want to finish with another quote from the same letter by Martin Luther King. Like Socrates, he believed it was necessary to create a state of tension in the mind in order for people to overcome their dependency and create a way to become individuals. [actual quote: “Just as Socrates felt that it was necessary to create a tension in the mind so that individuals could rise from the bondage of myths and half truths to the unfettered realm of creative analysis and objective appraisal, so must we see the need for nonviolent gadflies to create the kind of tension in society that will help men rise from the dark depths of prejudice and racism to the majestic heights of understanding and brotherhood. The purpose of our direct action program is to create a situation so crisis packed that it will inevitably open the door to negotiation. I therefore concur with you in your call for negotiation. Too long has our beloved Southland been bogged down in a tragic effort to live in monologue rather than dialogue.”]

That’s what is happening with the youth. We are inviting them to register and participate in the May conference. This will be very important. We will be having a youth panel which will present these proposals and the work we are doing with them. That’s what I wanted to present. Thank you very much.