Poets for Peace: Speak Out

by John Burl Smith

In support of Secretary-General Kofi Annan's call for a Year of Dialogue Among Civilizations during 2001, Poets for Peace held a Speak Out hosted by Yohannes and AHOP (African House of Poetry) Wednesday April 18, 2001. Representing the citizens of Atlanta, as well as, those throughout the State of Georgia, some of the hottest spoken word artists hanging in the ATL Vibe performed works expressing the Dialogue's theme of diversity. The following remarks did not qualify as poetry, therefore can not be published in the international anthology the UN will compile and freely disseminate to mark the year. Nonetheless concerns stated here reflect the majority sentiment coming out of that gathering.

A nuclear dome of protection around America is a Cold War relic. With the advent of the space race, another relic, bigger and more powerful nuclear payloads could be delivered over longer distances by bigger and more powerful rockets. From hiding under desks for protection against nuclear attacks to hiding our heads in the sand about President-select George W. Bush's latest version of the 1960's ABM, Americans show an appalling lack of appreciation for what has been learned over the last one hundred years. As asinine and absurd as building basement bomb shelters to surviving atomic blasts, Bush's nuclear shield requires America to spend trillions of dollars on a "feel safe" gimmick technology under the guise of maintaining a strategic balance. However, once in place, the world will have to accept America's total domination or they will blow it all up.

Buying into this logic, like good Germans, Americans are banning/burning books that speak out against the big lie. Affected with Schindler's syndrome, defenders and apologists for Nazism, found such an accommodation with hatred, racism, bigotry and terror that only their kind deserved life. Today, Europe must send "Lord Neville Chamberlain" once again to deal with the "Wolf at the Door." Reminiscent of Adolf Hitler, Bush is telling the world, "if you let me have this I will be satisfied." At the cost of millions of lives, Europeans should have learned, " one can never appease a greedy bully. They must be stopped in the yard, if possible but at the door by any means." Republicans are like Nazis, once seated at the table, they gorge themselves to the point of regurgitation, then burn the house down to dry the vomit.

Appeasement did not work then, and it will not work today. The world must resoundingly reject any concept that presents world destruction as an alternative to white male domination. If all people are Homo sapiens, we are killing our sisters and brothers no matter what their color or shape of their eyes. Even if a rogue state attacks Europe, how will a shield around America protect Paris? Moreover, only America has missiles capable of reaching every country any place on the earth. A nuclear attack by terrorists or rogue states will typically be like the assault on the USS Cole, rather than scenes from "Dr. Strange Love." How can missiles prevent those kind of attacks?

The Poets for Peace gathering see Bush's proposal as the beginning of a new international arms race sponsored by America. Nuclear war will kill everything! How will that protect America? Poets for Peace stretch out a lifeline through the UN's Year of Dialogue among Civilizations hoping to establish relationships that will last long after the Dialogue has ended. That is humanity's only hope for world peace.

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