4-06-09, 9:35 am

New York, NY -- Saturday, April 4. On the anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s assassination in Memphis, TN and the anniversary of his ‘Beyond Vietnam’ speech at Riverside Church, NYC – one year earlier – United for Peace and Justice (UFPJ) marched on Wall Street protesting the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan while demanding more money for domestic needs. In the historic speech, Dr. King said the “triple evils” that plagued the nation were “racism, extreme materialism, and militarism.”

“In the spirit of Dr. King and the movement of equality and justice of the fifties and sixties, I say if we want peace to blossom, we must eradicate poverty, racism, sexism, violence and greed in the U.S. Peace cannot come by crying peace. Peace can only begin to emerge as we do justice. 90 million working Americans hover in poverty or with poverty. The greatest impetuous for peace or stimulus to the economy is that those 90 million receive wages that would allow them to sustain themselves and their family. Nothing would be more explosive than that kind of stimulus,” preached Rev. James Lawson, co-worker with Rev. King, organizer of Freedom Rides and life long advocate for nonviolence.

“Dr. King once suggested that the ‘church should not be the servant of the state nor the master of the state, but conscious of the state.’ So today we gather as faith leaders and people of good will to send a righteous reminder to our President and other elected leaders that nonviolence and the concerns of the least of these must be at the forefront of out national and international agenda,” said Rev. Dr. Brad R. Braxton Senior Minister of the Riverside Church.

The esteemed reverends led the march holding a banner that read “Beyond War, A New Economy Is Possible,” followed by another large banner “End Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.” Organizers claimed that over 10,000 people joined, surrounded the NY Stock Exchange, and marched past the Federal building and the famous bull into what they called a “Peace Fair.” The New York Police department refuses to give crowd estimates.

“We have had enough of war! We need to devote all of our energy and attention to addressing the global economic and climate crises, to improving education, housing and health care in this country, not squandering $12 billion per month on the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan,” said Leslie Kielson, Co-Chair of United for Peace and Justice.

The groups campaign calls for an end to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and for new approaches to resolving the economic crisis, one that moves towards a green economy. UFPJ linked their campaign to Dr. King’s Riverside speech where he stated the need to “rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society.”

“On this anniversary of Reverend Martin Luther Kings’ speech ‘Beyond Vietnam,’ we march on Wall Street calling for and end to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and demand the use of tax dollars to meet human needs right here at home. We stand together to say war is not the solution to our economic problems,” said George Paz Martin, Co-Chair for UFPJ and board member of the Peace Action Education Fund.

Kielson thought that people have pinned their hopes on President Obama and the change he promised. His domestic agenda, outlined in his budget, takes steps in the right direction, she thought, but claimed his escalation of the war in Afghanistan, as well as the ongoing occupation of Iraq, threaten to obliterate the most progressive aspects of Obama’s domestic agenda, just as the war in Vietnam ruined the presidency of President Lyndon Johnson.

“More war is not the answer, and until fundamental changes are made in U.S. foreign policy -- an end to blank-check support for Israel, an end to U.S. occupation and military bases in Arab lands, an end to threats to Iran, an end to the chimera of the Global War on Terror, an end to hypocrisy on nuclear proliferation, and concrete steps to address legitimate grievances in the Arab and Muslim world -- whatever we do in Afghanistan or Pakistan or Iraq, short of a massive occupation which would be immoral and we can't afford, is doomed to failure,” stated Kielson.

UFPJ pointed out that King’s words still ring true across four decades, “A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.”