{"id":94429,"date":"2023-01-14T21:55:41","date_gmt":"2023-01-15T02:55:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/schillerinstitute.com\/?p=94429"},"modified":"2023-01-15T16:32:25","modified_gmt":"2023-01-15T21:32:25","slug":"ray-mcgovern-nevertheless-we-persist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/2.schillermeet.de\/de\/blog\/2023\/01\/14\/ray-mcgovern-nevertheless-we-persist\/","title":{"rendered":"Ray McGovern \u2014 Nevertheless, We Persist"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Nevertheless, We Persist \u2014 Ray McGovern\" width=\"860\" height=\"484\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/Pt1OX6rhXiQ?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center wp-block-paragraph\">Excerpt from the <a href=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/dJdDawXO7FM\" data-type=\"URL\" data-id=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/dJdDawXO7FM\">January 14, 2023 Schiller Institute conference<\/a> <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">RAY MCGOVERN: Thank you, Harley. I want to start with a quote from Dr. King. It has relevance to what\u2019s happening in providing billions and billions of dollars\u2019 worth of arms to Ukraine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cWhen profit motives are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Now, the original sin of our great country, the United States of America, is racism. It was true years ago when Dr. King was assassinated, and it\u2019s true now. It\u2019s at play not only in the United States, but on the world scene. I was only six years old when the U.S. bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki when it was not necessary to do so. Most people don\u2019t realize that President Truman was a racist, through and through. He always referred to African-Americans with the N-word. He had only one ally urging him to bomb Hiroshima and Nagasaki. All the five-star generals who had prevailed in World War II (which was just about to end) were against it; vehemently against use of the atomic bomb. I\u2019m talking about Eisenhower, I\u2019m talking about MacArthur, I\u2019m talking about Admiral Halsey in the Pacific; all of them five stars. They all really upset that anything like this was even contemplated. The only person who agreed with President Truman was a fellow named Jimmy Burns. Jimmy Burns came from South Carolina, and I want to play a little clip that will show you pretty graphically another fellow from South Carolina, and what he thought about the \u201coriental\u201d. Bear in mind now, that with respect to the \u201coriental\u201d, just this week the U.S. Congress passed a law authorizing a special select committee on China, on the \u201cYellow Peril.\u201d To understand China? Not really; it was just sort of a regular intervals to show how wicked China is, even though in my view, China would just as much appreciate and favor a win-win situation. But that\u2019s not in the cards with our exceptional racist government.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">May we have that clip, please? It\u2019s only five minutes. Please pay attention to the very end.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">VIDEO CLIP\u2014\u201cThe Vietnam War explained in less than five minutes. Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, too. Excerpts from \u2018Hearts and Minds\u2019\u201d from BrasscheckTV.com<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">[Various military aircraft flying through the sky.]<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">MUI DUC GIANG (in Saigon) building a child-sized coffin: Many bombs; many coffins. These are for children; 800 or 900 a week. I have lost seven children myself. Many have died here, though it\u2019s nothing like in the countryside. Many more have died there. In the countryside, there are no coffins; there is no money to buy them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">REPORTER: How did all the children die?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">MUI: Poison; poison, you know.  These planes keep spouting and spraying this stuff, and so many people have died. It seems to destroy their intestines. With the spraying and bombing, so many had died. Each day, right on time, the bomb craters appear. Hundreds of tons are dropped each day, and we can\u2019t talk about it. We can\u2019t talk about it because we are afraid of the government.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">RANDY FLOYD [98 bombing missions]: It can be described much like a singer doing an aria, who\u2019s totally into what he\u2019s doing; totally feeling it. He knows the aria, and he\u2019s experiencing the aria. He knows his limits, and he knows whether he\u2019s doing it and doing it well. Flying an aircraft can be a great deal like that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">LT. GEORGE COKER: What\u2019s a race driver feel like? Why does a guy want to drive in the Indianapolis 500 and go charging around there? I guess perhaps that the risk of dying, being killed, is part of it that makes it thrilling.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">[planes taking off from an aircraft carrier]<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">FLOYD: I can tell when the aircraft feels just right. I can tell when it\u2019s about to stall. I can tell when I can\u2019t pull another fraction of a pound, or the airplane will stall, flip out, and spin on me. I would follow a little pathway on something like a TV screen in front of me that would direct me right, left, or center. I\u2019d follow the steering, keep the steering symbol centered. I\u2019d see a little attack light, when we stepped in to attack. I could pull the commit switch on my stick, and the computer took over. The computer figured out the ballistics, the air speed, the slant range, and dropped the bombs when we got to the appropriate point and whichever kind of attack we\u2019d selected; whether it be flying straight and level, or tossing our bombs out. So, it was very much of a technical expertise thing. I was a good pilot. I had a lot of pride in my ability to fly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">[explosions]<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">YOUNG CHILD: [crying and moaning, holding a picture of her father]<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">GEN. WILLIAM WESTMORELAND: Well, the Oriental doesn\u2019t put the same high price on life as does the Westerner. Life is plentiful; life is cheap in the Orient. As the philosophy of the Orient expresses it, life is not important.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">[explosions; whole village bombed] [end video]<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">MCGOVERN: Got it? Life is not so important for people who look like the Vietnamese, the Chinese. And I daresay many people still have that outlook, especially if they happen to be from South Carolina, which not only Secretary of State Jimmy Burns was, but also General William Westmoreland, and of course, Senator Lindsey Graham is created in the same mold.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">What do we think of all this? Well, during Vietnam, Angela Davis, a prominent opponent of the war, was arrested. She was manacled, and she was put on the front cover of Newsweek magazine\u2014we got her! This is at the height of the Vietnam War. James Baldwin wrote a letter to Sister Angela. I\u2019d like to read a short excerpt:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cAn Open Letter to My Sister Angela Y. Davis; November 19, 1970.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cDear Sister,<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cOne might have hoped that, by this hour, the very sight of chains on Black flesh, or the very sight of chains, would be so intolerable a sight for the American people, and so unbearable a memory, that they would themselves spontaneously rise up and strike off the manacles. But \u2026 [Americans] appear to measure their safety in chains and corpses [of others]. And so, Newsweek \u2026 puts you on its cover, chained.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cYou look exceedingly alone\u2014as alone, say, as the Jewish housewife in the boxcar headed for Dachau, or as any one of our ancestors, chained together [during the ocean passage] \u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cOr, to put it another way, as long as white Americans take refuge in their whiteness \u2026 they will allow millions of people to be slaughtered \u2026 [S]o long as their whiteness puts so sinister a distance between \u2026 their own experience and the experience of others, [they will never] feel themselves sufficiently worthwhile, to become responsible for themselves \u2026\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Let\u2019s fast forward to Memphis, and the night before Dr. King was assassinated. James Lawson, who was the epitome of nonviolence, told a little story to a few of us who were doing a retreat at the Alex Haley forum in Tennessee about eight years ago. He said, when he was a little boy, his mother had schooled him in nonviolence. One day he came home from school, he had a very guilty conscience, and his mother sensed that. She asked, \u201cWhat\u2019s the matter, Jimmy?\u201d He said, \u201cI hit somebody really hard because he deserved it.\u201d \u201cMy mother said,\u201d said Dr. Lawson, \u201c|\u2018Now Jimmy, think about it. What good did that do?\u2019\u201d James Lawson became the epitome for nonviolent advocacy, and it was he who invited Dr. King down to Memphis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Memphis was in real trouble. The night before Dr. King was killed, he made an extremely important speech, and one of the things he said was this:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cWe have difficulties ahead, but it really doesn\u2019t matter with me anymore. Like anyone, I would like a long life. But I\u2019m not going to be concerned about that right now. I\u2019ve seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you, but as a people, we will get to the Promised Land. So, I\u2019m happy tonight. I am not worried about anything. I am not fearing any man.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This was just hours before he was assassinated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I also had the good fortune of knowing Vincent Harding, who actually authored the Vietnam speech for Dr. King; the one he made exactly a year before. Vincent Harding was a prophet; he was a mentor. He would start classes or retreats or speeches by singing an old enslaved people\u2019s spiritual tune to lyrics that go to we are building up a new world. [Sings] \u201cWe are building up a new world. We are building up a new world. We are building up a new world, children of the Lord. Courage sisters; don\u2019t get weary. Courage brothers; don\u2019t get weary. Courage, children; don\u2019t get weary, for the day is long.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Well, the day is long, and people suffer along the way. JFK, Robert Kennedy, Dr. King, Brother Martin before them all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I\u2019m going to close now with a quote from Fannie Lou Hamer, also a major figure in what Dr. Vincent Harding called \u201cthe church-led Southern freedom struggle\u201d; also known as the civil rights struggle. Fannie Lou Hamer was a sharecropper from Mississippi. She became the representative of the Freedom Democratic Party at the Democratic Party convention in 1964. She didn\u2019t succeed, but she did. Here\u2019s what she said:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cOne day, I know the struggle will change. There\u2019s got to be change; not only for Mississippi, but for the people of the United States overall, and for people all over the world. Sometimes, it seems that to tell the truth today is to risk being killed. But if I fall, I\u2019ll fall five feet four inches forward in the fight for freedom. I\u2019m not backing off.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I hold that up as an example. I might not see the Promised Land either, but if I fall, I will fall five feet eleven inches forward in the fight for freedom. I\u2019m not backing off. Let\u2019s none of us back off. Thank you very much.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Excerpt from the January 14, 2023 Schiller Institute conference RAY MCGOVERN: Thank you, Harley. I want to start with a quote from Dr. King. It has relevance to what\u2019s happening in providing billions and billions of dollars\u2019 worth of arms to Ukraine. \u201cWhen profit motives are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":25,"featured_media":94441,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[842],"class_list":["post-94429","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-allgemein","tag-lang-en"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/2.schillermeet.de\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94429","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/2.schillermeet.de\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/2.schillermeet.de\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/2.schillermeet.de\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/25"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/2.schillermeet.de\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=94429"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/2.schillermeet.de\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94429\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":94465,"href":"https:\/\/2.schillermeet.de\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94429\/revisions\/94465"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/2.schillermeet.de\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/94441"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/2.schillermeet.de\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=94429"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/2.schillermeet.de\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=94429"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/2.schillermeet.de\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=94429"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}