|
Calling for “fewer bombs and more ice cream,” a self-professed “urban monastic” and the co-founder of Ben and Jerry’s Ice Cream made their case before over 4,000 mostly young evangelical Christians gathered February 25 in Portland, Oregon.
Pacifist activist Shane Claiborne and ice cream magnate Ben Cohen tag-teamed a presentation at the Justice Conference, a two day social justice-themed gathering bringing together artists, theologians, human trafficking opponents and relief and development officials. Utilizing stacks of Oreo cookies to display federal budget information and bringing a professional juggler on stage to simultaneously manipulate a machete, axe and fake bomb, the presentation was part circus act and part plea to drastically slash U.S. military spending.
Energetically bouncing between audience volunteers and shopping carts to illustrate disparities in global consumption, the dreadlocked founder of inner city Philadelphia’s The Simple Way community had the crowd laughing and clapping during much of his 45 minutes on stage at the Oregon Convention Center.
“We’ve created poverty because we haven’t discovered how to share,” Claiborne declared, advising that if Americans did not take more than they needed, there would be enough. “The more stuff we have, the more clubs we need to protect it.”
Cohen linked global inequality with U.S. military spending by saying the “economic violence” of spending to prepare for war was twofold: It both purchases bombs and denies use of the money for other causes.
“The way politicians are spending our money is immoral,” Cohen pronounced. “Even if the bombs are never dropped, they kill the poor by causing them to starve.”
Claiborne, who recounted his experience in 2003 defending Iraq from U.S. bombs as part of Christian Peacemaker Teams, cites Anabaptist teaching as inspiration for his pacifism. Recalling a soldier who gave Claiborne his “chains” of military dog tags, the opponent of U.S. military action reported the suicide rate among soldiers is higher than the rate of combat deaths.
Claiming that the $20 billion spent on the U.S. nuclear arsenal could be halved while still preserving an effective nuclear deterrent, Cohen proceeded to uncover stacks of Oreo cookies representing the U.S. budget for the military and programs like Head Start. Subtracting from the tower of cookies standing in for Pentagon spending, Cohen portrayed how college scholarships, social services and incentives for hybrid cars could be dramatically increased. Cohen dismissed arguments that reductions in military spending could leave the U.S. more vulnerable to adversaries, using the cookie chart to illustrate significantly less military spending on the part of Russia, China, and rogue states like North Korea.
“We can do better – and we must – and the possibilities are there to reimagine the world,” Claiborne implored, asserting that $20,000 a second was spent on militarism and war in the United States.
“It’s time, it’s time, amen.” Claiborne said to claps of approval from the audience.
“It’s just a matter of priorities,” Cohen judged, displaying a chart identified as the U.S. federal budget and that showed the U.S. spending almost 50 percent on the military, or expenses related to “current wars and past wars.”
The chart, which was limited to U.S. discretionary spending, did not include entitlement spending on Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid or other related programs as part of the total federal budget. The static chart also did not show changes in spending levels or increasing debt.
“We could bring in much more money to the government by increasing taxes on the wealthy and on Wall Street,” Cohen suggested, also calling for the end of tax breaks “to corporations who are destroying the environment.”
“When Jesus disarmed Peter, he disarmed every Christian,” Claiborne claimed. “If anyone had a right to pick up a sword, it was Peter, and Jesus told him — and the early Christians were marked by – non-violent radical love for hundreds of years.”
Saying that “grace and love can disarm violence without mirroring it,” Claiborne called for Christians to be known by “a consistent ethic of life,” and that “we need to be pro-life from the womb to the tomb.”
“Jesus made a spectacle of violence on the cross by exposing it, by enduring it and by triumphing over it through the resurrection in love,” Claiborne said to applause.
Concluding the presentation with a call for everyone present to “play a part” in ending violence, the pair invited the juggler back on stage to toss axes over Cohen, while free ice cream was announced outside of the main hall, producing an eruption of applause and a rush for the doors.
Related articles:
No comments yet
Leave a Reply