6 March 2003
What I would have said to the Buffalo Common Council about the peace resolution before them on March 4 if I'd been allowed to speak which I wasn't because nobody at all got to speak about the resolution because eight members on the Council wouldn't let anybody talk about it.
My name is Bruce Jackson. I'm a Distinguished Professor at University at Buffalo and a veteran of the United States Marine Corps.
Los Angeles, Oakland, Denver, Atlanta, Chicago, Gary, Baltimore, Detroit, Jersey City, Syracuse, Cleveland, Philadelphia, Austin, Seattle, Milwaukee and, as of ten o'clock this morning, 109 other US cities and counties, large and small, have passed resolutions similar to the resolution before you this afternoon. Local governments of more cities than that are in the process of doing what you're doing here today.
Will all these local resolutions stop the drummers of war? Will all the petitions being circulated by community and religious and educational groups stop the drummers of war? Probably not. They seem deaf to everything except their own inner vision. They act like holy maniacs who listen to no one but themselves. In an astonishingly brief period of time they converted the huge amount of international goodwill toward our country after September 11 into anger and distrust.
But this resolution isn't about them. It is about us.
The statement says that we, as citizens of Buffalo, believe in the supreme importance of international law.
That we, as citizens of Buffalo believe war is a last resort taken up regretfully by peaceful people, not a first choice of people for whom the question of peace stops at the water's edge.
This resolution is not just for now; it is also for later. For after it's over and we see the consequences of having spent $800 per American, $2400 for every family of four, for the initial assault on Iraq alone. One hundred billion dollars for the few days of that first assault. And that is the Defense Department's conservative estimate. It very well may be considerably more.
What would our fair share of that buy this city, which has suffered so much?
And then there are the years to follow, the years of military occupation, which some generals put at as many as ten, the years of ever-increased terrorism and hatred of us, which nearly all scholars say are sure to come. Those costs, in dollars and in suffering, will dwarf this initial one hundred billion dollars.
What will happen to our city's share of our national resources then? What national resources will there be? What will be available for education, health care, infrastructure, social services, housing, environment?
Voting for this means we can continue to say, when this goes bad, as it surely will, "We warned you. You wouldn't listen. So now we're going to elect people who will listen." It will encourage the next round of people who occupy those same offices to listen to the people whose country this is.
How can we say "You didn't listen" when we chose not to speak? How can we say "You didn't hear us" when we maintained silence at a time when more and more other voices of moral conscience and civic responsibility were being raised?
You know that while these drums of war have been beating ever more loudly, Bush and Ashcroft and their associates have been making vicious assaults on our civil rights and our environment. Environmental protections have been rolled back in the name of national security. Our most basic rights have been reduced or sorely endangered in the name of national security.
The rules of this Council, I've been told, do not permit you the option of an abstention, you have to choose. You can say "This is too complex to understand" but I won't believe you and neither will anyone in this room. You know what's at stake here. We all do.
Tabling this for two weeks to quibble over a phrase or a clause is doing nothing. We don't have two weeks. If you are going to vote on this, the time to vote it is now. This isn't a law every word of which must be parsed to perfection. This is a statement about the consequences of unnecessary war.
Voting to do nothing is choosing to do something. Voting against this statement endorses the makers of war. History is full of good citizens who stood by in silence because— against their better judgment —they trusted those in authority or because they were lazy or because they were timid. Time and again those good citizens later came to loathe their silence.
It costs you nothing to do the right thing this afternoon. The terrible price, as always, comes from having consciously chosen to do the wrong thing. You know what the right thing is. Do it. Vote for law. Vote for peace. Vote for government of the people, by the people and for the people.
Thank you for your attention and your consideration.
But, as the title says, I got to say none of that. Nobody got to say anything because eight members of the Council blocked any consideration of the peace resolution at all. See Buffalo Goons.
"Buffalo Goons," which describes what happened at the March 4 Common Council meeting
The text of the resolution proposed by Council President Pitts and Councilman Thompson.
The text of the David Franczyk amendment, which David Franczyk never tried to submit but which James Pitts, Betty Jean Grant and Antoine Thompson did try to submit.
"Scoundrels and liars at the Buffalo Common Council," which describes the way several members of the council subsequently tried to scapegoat Pitts for what they did.
Copyright 2003 by Buffalo Report, Inc.