Monday, November 19, 2012

Lambert to Clergy: On Drones, "Silence is Betrayal"

Indiana antiwar activist Dave Lambert threw down the gauntlet in an opinion piece published Friday in the Ft. Wayne News-Sentinel:
On April 4, 1967, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his antiwar speech at Riverside Church to an audience of Clergy and Laymen Concerned About Vietnam. You can read it on the Web at www.tinyurl.com/mlk1967. In that speech, entitled “Beyond Vietnam,” he said that “silence is betrayal.” He was imploring members of the clergy, as well as lay people, to speak out against the war, which he considered obscene and “an enemy of the poor.”

Today, we have no one of his prominence speaking out against the war in Afghanistan, now in its 12th year, nor against the illegal use of drones. Unfortunate.
Lambert continued: "Dr King, at Riverside, said 'the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today (is) my own government.' It would be wonderful, in my estimation, if caring clergy and lay people could heed Dr. King’s message and speak out against the slaughter in the name of 'fighting terrorism.' (Emphasis added.)

(Read the full opinion piece here: Speak out against the slaughter inflicted by 'fighting terrorism'.)

Dave Lambert is a member of Veterans for Peace, Military Families Speak Out, and for the past few months, he has been transporting a one-fifth model of a Reaper drone from Know Drones to towns and cities throughout Indiana, and handing out information leaflets, "in an effort to educate people about what their tax dollars are paying for as well as the wanton destruction this machine of war causes." You can see more of Dave Lambert's work on the Indiana Drones Project blogsite:

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