AMY GOODMAN: You are listening to Democracy Now! At the same time that the protests — that the observances of last September 11th have been taking place around the world have been a variety of events. There were peace rallies being held around the nation. In Los Angeles, relatives of the victims of the September 11th attacks brought a packed Baptist church to its feet calling for no war on Iraq. In New York, in Washington Square Park, thousands gathered on the eve of the anniversary for an overnight peace vigil. Among those who spoke at that event were Manning Marable, professor of African American studies at Columbia University. This is what he had to say.

MANNING MARABLE: It is still mourning time here in New York City. No matter how much time passes, the tragedy of the terrorist attack against the World Trade Center towers will remain brutally fresh and terribly vivid for millions of people who live in this city. For those of us who live and work here, for those of us who love this city, our grief is still overwhelming. There can be no justification. There can be no excuse, no rationale for the deliberate use of deadly force and unprovoked violence against any civilian population. But this was not essentially an act of war, but it was a criminal act, a crime against not just the American people, but all of humanity.

One fairly standard definition of “terrorism” is the use of extralegal extremist violence in coercion against a civilian or noncombatant population. Terrorist acts may be employed to instill fear and mass intimidation to achieve a political objective. By any criteria, al-Qaeda is a terrorist organization. That is true. Most Americans have never experienced terrorism, but we Americans have unleashed terrorism against others, millions throughout the world. The mass lynchings, the public executions, the burnings at the stake of thousands of African Americans in the early 20th century were home-grown domestic acts of terrorism. The genocide of millions of American Indians was objectively a calculated plan for mass terrorism. The dropping of the atomic bomb on Japanese cities in World War II, resulting in the fiery incineration of hundreds of thousands of people, was a crime against humanity. The U.S.-sponsored coup against the democratically elected government of Salvador Allende in Chile on 9/11, 1973, culminated in the mass torture, the rapes, the executions of thousands of people. That was nothing less than state-financed terrorism. And so, there is a common political immorality that links the terrorists of 9/11, the terrorists Osama bin Laden, Augusto Pinochet and Henry Kissinger. They all traffic in terrorism.

We are now witnessing dissident profiling in this country, the proliferation of electronic surveillance, roving wiretapping, harassment at the workplace, the infiltration and disruption of antiwar groups, the stigmatization of any critics of U.S militarism — are viewed as disloyal and disruptive. But I believe that one cannot preserve democracy by destroying the democratic rights of any individual or group in this country. I believe that to publicly oppose a government’s policies that one believes to be morally and politically wrong, as Dr. King asserted, is to express the strongest belief in the principles of democracy. Those of us who oppose our government’s course of action must clearly explain to the American people that the missile strikes and indiscriminate carpet bombings that we have unleashed against the people of the world, of Afghanistan and other parts of the world, will not make us safer. The policies of the Bush administration actually put our lives in greater danger, because the use of government-sponsored terror will not halt brutal retaliations by those who carry out terror. The national security state apparatus we are constructing in this country is being designed primarily to suppress domestic dissent and not to halt terrorists from coming in the country. The war against terrorism, this so-called war, is used as an excuse to eliminate civil liberties and democratic rights for the American people themselves.

This war at home has a profoundly racial dimension. Because the U.S. democracy was constructed on a racial foundation, the government always has found it difficult to present a clear democratic argument to advance the interest in the pursuit of warfare. Instead, it relies on and manipulates the latent racism and the xenophobia at all levels of our society. Usually, that racism is used to target external enemies, such as the Japanese during World War II. But in general, wherever the United States mobilizes militarily, whenever the United States goes to war, white racism goes with it hand in hand.

There is a clear link between 9/11 and the shameful political maneuvering committed by the United States at the World Conference Against Racism last year in Durban, only days before the attacks. There, the U.S. government opposed the definition of slavery as a crime against humanity. It opposed and refused to acknowledge the historical and contemporary effects of colonialism and segregation on the underdeveloped and oppression of non-European people, the dark, the vast majority of humankind. Dark humanity is saying to the United States that racism, that militarism are not the solutions to the world’s major problems.

According to the United Nations, the world’s 225 wealthiest individuals have a combined net wealth of $1 trillion, which was equal to the combined income of the planet’s most impoverished 2.5 billion people. One half of the people currently living on this planet, slightly more than 3 million people, exist on the equivalent of $2 or less a day. For them, globalization is nothing less than a new phase of racialization on a global scale.

To stop — so, let me conclude, two points. To stop the extraordinary violence of terrorism, we must stop the daily violence of class inequality, of globalization and of poverty. To engage in the struggle for justice, to find new paths toward reconciliation across the boundaries of religion, culture and color is the only way to protect our cities. It is the only way to protect our country and ourselves from the terrible violence of terrorism, because without justice, there can be no peace. Martin Luther King — let me close with this. Martin Luther King said, “The moral arc of the universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” We must make it bend toward justice this evening by saying no to racism, no to racial profiling. We say no to the war that is going to be launched against Iraq. We say no! And we say yes to peace. We say yes to humanity. We say yes. And the struggle continues until the peace, ’til justice is won. Thank you.

AMY GOODMAN: Professor Manning Marable of Columbia University, radical historian. This is Democracy Now! He was speaking at a peace vigil on the eve of September 11th. If you’d like to get a video or audio or CD, cassette copy of today’s program, you can call 1-800-881-2359. That’s 1-800-881-2359. When we come back, Kathy Kelly and Julia Butterfly. Stay with us.

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AMY GOODMAN: You are listening to Democracy Now!, Aurelia, here on Resistance Radio. I’m Amy Goodman, as we go back to the Washington Square Park rally with Kathy Kelly, who’s co-founder of Voices in the Wilderness. Established in 1996 to seek an end to U.N. sanctions against Iraq, Voices has brought Americans into Iraq to witness the effects of sanctions, to deliver food and medicine and to educate the U.S. public. Kathy Kelly has twice been nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize.

KATHY KELLY: Thank you, all of you, for being voices for peace amidst cries for war. Maybe one of the things that took some real courage on my part once in 1991, before going over to Iraq during the Gulf War, was to go home to my mother’s house to tell her what I was about to do. And as I left, having not been able to sell this idea at all, she shouted out to me in her thick Irish brogue, “Kathy, what about the incubators? What about the incubators?” And my mother was remembering a young Kuwaiti woman’s compelling story that had been testimony before the U.S. Congress, that she had seen Iraqi soldiers dump Kuwaiti babies out of incubators and then run away and steal the incubators. And my mother said, “They’ve got to be stopped. You can’t allow people like that to continue.” But six months after the war ended, the Gulf War in 1991, enterprising journalists went to Kuwait, and they discovered that the story was a hoax. Young Nayirah had never left the United States, she the daughter of a Kuwaiti ambassador to the United States. And a very prestigious public relations firm had trained people to market that war.

This past weekend, Mr. Andrew Card, now hired to market the new war, although in many ways the war has never ended against Iraq — Mr. Andrew Card tried to reassure people. He said, “Everybody knows you never bring out a new product in August.” And so, they’ll try to roll out the new war in September. But we know that Hiroshima and Nagasaki happened in August. The guns of war in World War I happened in August. The economic sanctions were imposed on Iraq on August 2nd, 1990.

And now, 12 years after the most devastating state of siege ever imposed in modern history, I can’t come to you and tell you, “Why do they hate us so much?” I come back bewildered, asking, “Why do they love us so much?” From Iraq, the letters came immediately after September 11th. They were handwritten, many of them in pencil, asking, “Please, tell your people how sorry we are.” They echoed what mothers said at their children’s bedside as they would tell us, “Believe us, we pray this will never happen to a mother in your country,” minutes before a child died. They echoed the sentiments of people who said, “We know that you are not your government, that your people would never do this to us.” And in a way, they echo what Mr. Colin Powell said on September 11th: “The people who perpetrated that barbarous act thought that by killing people and destroying buildings, you could achieve a political goal.” And then Colin Powell said, “They are always wrong.” And so, we have the mirror into which we must look to gain political maturity. We’re a young country. We must look into the mirror of truth and see that at times we’ve not been able to hear the cries of grief of others and to welcome and reverence those who taught us so well this year that our grief is not a cry for war.

AMY GOODMAN: Kathy Kelly, speaking at a peace vigil on the eve of the September 11th observance yesterday. Kathy Kelly of Voices in the Wilderness just concluded a 40-day fast in front of the United Nations protesting U.S. sanctions against Iraq and the continued bombing of the country.