It’s been 15 years since the death of the United Farm Workers’ Cesar Chavez -- way past time to make his birthdate of March 31 a national holiday. Petitions urging Congress to do just that are now being circulated, appropriately on the 40th anniversary of the 25-day fast that was one of the most extreme and most effective of his many truly heroic acts.

Like Martin Luther King Jr., who’s rightly honored with a national holiday, Chavez inspired and energized millions of people worldwide to seek – and to win – basic human rights that had long been denied them and inspired millions of others to join the struggle.

A national holiday would be a well-deserved tribute to Latinos and organized labor. Even more than that, it would be a special opportunity to remind Americans everywhere of the profound lessons of Chavez’ extraordinary life.

He showed, above all, that the poor and oppressed can prevail against even the most powerful opponents – if they can organize themselves and adopt non-violence as their principal tactic.

“We have our bodies and spirits and the justice of our cause as our weapons,” Chavez explained.

Remarks at American University Teach-In on March 22, 2008

Robert Dreyfuss's presentation that I now have to follow was tremendous and I learned a lot, but I disagree with his pessimism. I am fond of the saying "Let's save our pessimism for better times." It's a choice to be a pessimist, and it is a wrong one, always.

So, here we are again, a crowd dominated by old white people on a college campus in a black city. But on March 12th and 19th in this city I watched hundreds of college students and African Americans put their bodies in the way of arrest and abuse for peace. If I had to choose, I'd rather have people in the streets than in a teach-in.

Still, I think this all-too-typical turnout suggests how segregation and civic weakness in this country allows mass murder to occur in other countries. We have long term work to do assuming we live long enough to do it.

"I trained my weapon on him," Kristopher Goldsmith said. It was a little boy, 6 years old maybe, standing on a roof, menacing the soldiers with a stick. "I was thinking, I hate these Iraqis who throw rocks. I could kill this kid."

OK, America, let’s look through the sights of Goldsmith’s rifle for a long, long half-minute or so, draw a bead on the boy’s heart, fondle the trigger -- what to do? The soldier’s decision is our decision.

This is occupied Iraq: the uncensored version, presented to us with relentless, at times unbearable honesty over four intense days last week in a historic gathering outside Washington, D.C., of returning vets, many of them broken and bitter about what they were forced to do, and what’s been done to them, in sometimes two, three, four tours of duty in the biggest mistake in American history.

"These are the times that try men’s souls," Thomas Paine wrote in 1776. "The summer soldier and sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of his country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman."

Thank You. It is good and it is right that today, here in our state’s capital, on the fifth anniversary of our nation’s launching of the Iraq War, we are giving voice and visible testimony to both our grief about the war and our hope about the prospects for peace. By giving voice and witness to our beliefs we are declaring our determined opposition to the endless stay-the-course-and-we-can-win policies of the current administration. 

As you know, silence and invisibility are enemies of truthfulness, justice, human rights, and yes, peace. In the case of the Iraq war, those that precipitated it, those that would perpetuate it, seek to hide it from the public—no taxes are paid to fund it—, and to sanitize it—no caskets are seen to show the cost of it. They seek to hide the realities of the war in order to continue a policy that the clear majority of Americans, after sober reflection, now reject. And so it is good that we break this official silence, giving witness here and now to the will of the people.