The Town of Harwich
No Place for Hate Committee of Harwich
January 18th, 2010
Our Program
Musical Talent:
Jennifer Stratton, Don Bolvin,
John Dickson, and Diana Di Gioia
Welcome:
John Bangert, Ed Mc Manus
Flag Ceremony:
Harwich Boy Scout Troop 76
Pledge of Allegiance
Reading # 1: Jane Texeira Henry
Interlude: Jennifer Stratton & Don Bolvin
Reading # 2: Pamela Lloyd Baker
Public Sharing: Anyone (under 2 minutes)
Closing Song: Diana Di Gioia
Silent or Expressed Prayers
Local Cape Cod Haiti Relief Efforts
The Haiti Project
http://artmatenwa.org
Ø Ben Berry, NRHS
Ø (774) 722-2745
Hearts for Haiti
http://heartsforhaiti.wordpress.com
Ø Julie Bangert, Beth Lagg & Sophia Gianniotis
Ø (508) 360-1160
Saint Rock Haiti Foundation
Ø Kumara Sidhartha, MD / Emerald Physicians Group
Ø 508 778-4777
http://www.saintrock.orgMartin Luther King
Life, let me be aware of the treasure that you are.
Let me learn from you, savor you, bless you,
before you depart.
Let me not pass by in quest of some rare
and perfect tomorrow.
Let me hold you while I may,
for it will not always be so.
One day I shall dig my fingers into the earth,
or bury my face in the pillow,
or stretch myself taut,
or raise my hands to the sky,
and want more than all the world,
your return.
Choose life and only that,
and always at whatever risk....
To let life leak out,
to let it wear away by the mere passage of time,
to withhold giving it and spending it,
is to choose -- nothing.
My real purpose is to discover the creator within me and reveal him to those I meet.
I just want to be there in love and justice and in truth and in commitment to others, so that we can make of this old world - a new world.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
You faced injustice, hate and strife.
You fought for what should be.
You risked and finally gave your life,
So others could be free.
You fought for what should be.
You risked and finally gave your life,
So others could be free.
You could have hated, but you chose
To love and understand,
Rejecting violence to oppose
An evil in our land.
To love and understand,
Rejecting violence to oppose
An evil in our land.
You'd not inflame, but still inspire,
With hope that wouldn't yield.
You called for boycotts, not for fire,
With faith your only shield.
With hope that wouldn't yield.
You called for boycotts, not for fire,
With faith your only shield.
You marched in protest for the poor
Of every shade and hue.
So many hardships you'd endure
For those who needed you.
Of every shade and hue.
So many hardships you'd endure
For those who needed you.
You stirred a nation's heart and mind;
Your message still is clear:
That color's not how we're defined.
Your memories always near.
Your message still is clear:
That color's not how we're defined.
Your memories always near.
Each year your birth's a holiday.
The nation honors you,
And wonders when we'll see the day
Your dream at last comes true.
The nation honors you,
And wonders when we'll see the day
Your dream at last comes true.
FREE TO MAKE IT BETTER
Words and Music by Diana Di Gioia Copyright 2010
Chorus
I am free to make it better
I am free to let it flow
To put all my skill and heart in this community I know
I can wait for them to fix it
I can wait for times to change
If I don’t work to make it better now
I help keep things the same
Things couldn’t feel more broken
We couldn’t be more scared
Tho’ we search for deeper meaning
We’re confounded by despair
We can see the web is breaking
That has woven all in place
Will our earth be another lifeless marble
Spinning through space?
Chorus
They’re using every strategy
To split us from each other
The Queer who is your Sister
The Immigrant my Brother
To keep us all distracted from
The ways we are the same
When power is the motive
Life and death becomes a game
Chorus
What if everything I did made a difference?
What if compromise was just a lie?
If there’s a third way, a fourth way, a better way
That we hadn’t thought to try?
What if each of us holds a fragment
Of the change we want to see?
When we gather up everyone’s piece of the truth
Then together we hold the key
We are free to make it better
We are free to let it flow
To put all our skill and heart in this community we know
We can wait for them to fix it
We can wait for times to change
If we don’t work to make it better now
We help keep things the same
When we all work to make it better, now
Then nothing stays the same
Martin Luther King, Jr., Wall Street Journal, November 13, 1962.
“Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. Hate multiplies
hate, violence multiplies violence, and toughness multiplies toughness in a descending spiral of destruction....The chain reaction of evil--hate begetting hate, wars producing more wars--must be broken, or we shall be plunged into the dark abyss of
annihilation.”
Martin Luther King, Jr., Strength to Love, 1963.
“Like an unchecked cancer, hate corrodes the personality and eats away its vital unity. Hate destroys a man's sense of values
and his objectivity. It causes him to describe the beautiful as ugly and the ugly as beautiful, and to confuse the true with the false
and the false with the true.”
Today is Martin Luther King’s birthday. This Haiti 1/12 tragedy is of biblical proportions, compared to 9/11 in NYC. Recently on TV some ‘man of the cloth’ and political usurpers are using the incident to spread their twisted world views, Martin surely would’ve used the occasion to spread wisdom and good will and encourage his fellow man to help out our Haitian brothers and sisters in need. But still what happened in Haiti is deeper than that. Columbus first landed there then called Hispaniola over 400 years ago. Perhaps this nation will be our country transformative wake up call for not only North American this hemisphere, but also be the light out of darkness and despair.
For King, giving cash to Haiti would not be enough. In order to be good citizens of the world, it is not good enough to just to give money, we must make sure to end the economic and social climate that led to the disaster. Here’s an excerpt from MLK’s speech “Beyond Vietnam.”
Beyond Vietnam
“A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies. On the one hand we are called to play the good Samaritan on life’s roadside; but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life’s highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it is not haphazard and superficial. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth.”
Dr. King goes on, addressing America’s foreign policy and how it is destructive to the Third World.
“With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say: “This is not just.” It will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of Latin America and say: “This is not just.” The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just.”
Rev. King would also condemn countries that spend more money on wars than social program. The USA has pledged $100 million in aid to Haiti, while pledging upwards of $30 billion to add 30,000 troops in Afghanistan.
“A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death. America, the richest and most powerful nation in the world, can well lead the way in this revolution of values. There is nothing, except a tragic death wish, to prevent us from reordering our priorities, so that the pursuit of peace will take precedence over the pursuit of war. There is nothing to keep us from molding a recalcitrant status quo with bruised hands until we have fashioned it into a brotherhood.”
