Muslims For Kucinich

"Evolutionary politics will confront the chaos of the moment, a chaos which is driven by fear, control, and power; and by fragmentation, secrecy, isolation, alienation, and mistrust. That system cannot stand. It’s falling apart. We’re not seeing the beginning of some new empire, because that’s ridiculous. This chaos will yield to harmony...as we move forward in evolving our politics."

This was Dennis Kucinich speaking at the Foundation for Global Community in Palo Alto, California, in November. The dynamic, visionary leader of the Progressive Caucus in the U.S. House of Representatives, Kucinich is a politician at the forefront of a revolution of hope in American politics. His own website reads: "He combines a powerful activism with a spiritual sense of the essential interconnectedness of all living things." Studs Terkel wrote that this holistic worldview combines with the fact that, based on his track record in his home state of Ohio, Kucinich is a "remarkably practical and astute politician."

I interviewed the Congressman shortly before he gave a speech at the University of California, Berkeley. In the speech, he called for a Second Renaissance which goes beyond the "pretensions of empire" to "connect with our aspirations for peace and reclaim the ingenuity and creativity in human relations." –LdB

LAUREN DE BOER: You’ve just come from Johannesburg where you attended the World Summit for Sustainability. There’s a sense that the aims of the Rio Earth Summit ten years ago weren’t seeing much progress, that the U.S. was being obstructive on key points, that this Summit, ten years later, was just about words. Do you feel there were gains made? Do you have a sense of greater potential here?

CONGRESSMAN DENNIS KUCINICH: I was pleased to be in attendance at Johannesburg at the World Summit for Sustainability because it gave me and other members of Congress an opportunity to continue to articulate the aspirations of millions of Americans for our country's participation in cleaning up the air, the water, and protecting our common global habitat.

Unfortunately, the current administration does not accept for America a responsibility to limit greenhouse gases, to curtail carbon emissions, to develop alternative energies, to fund renewables. Instead, we’re being led down a path of increased use of fossil fuels, of exploration for more fossil fuels–and towards war–because of our backwards energy policies.

The entire world is aware that America can do more. We need leadership that has the resolve to do more and to participate as a nation among nations to ensure the protection of the global environment. We have a moral obligation to do this. We’re not breathing different air than any other nation. In some ways, we’re breathing more polluted air. And we’re not just saving the lives of people in other countries, which we have an obligation to do. We’re saving our own lives. It’s time! It’s incomprehensible that any of our political leaders would continue to delay progress towards sustainability.

LdB: One of the steps that you want to take toward sustainability, one that you mentioned in your speech at Johannesburg, is the creation of a $50 billion solar venture fund for developing nations. Could you say more about that initiative?

DK: I’m working with Global Green which is the organization started by Mikhail Gorbachev (see www.globalgreen.org/contact/svfund.html/ for more information on Global Green and the Solar Venture Fund). At Johannesburg, we discussed with representatives of many nations the importance of moving the United States toward sustainable energy technologies, toward renewable energy. Of course the basis of that is solar.

The idea of a $50 billion fund would be funded in part by the U.S. It would be our contribution to help developing nations make a leap over the heartaches of pollution which come from industries that use fossil fuels and begin to enjoy the economic benefits of solar. I’m also advocating that the U.S. produce tax incentives for the introduction and application of solar technologies. It’s long past the time to do that! We’re late! It’s not only the developing nations who need the help. We can provide incentives here in our country, for domestic application, and for business and industry. It’s time! There’s still time to save this planet, to keep it green, to protect our coastlines, to protect our health and future generations–there’s still time! We just have to have the will to do it.

LdB: The current administration is heading very fast in the opposite direction. Do you think that has the potential to galvanize that will somewhat?

DK: I think it can produce the kind of pressure that can cause people to desire a new day, to look for a dawn where you can wake up and the air is clean, the land is green, the waters are pure. That actually was our inheritance as a nation. That’s where we came in as a nation, and we can return to it.

In the 21st century, progressive economic thinking and the development of sustainable energy technologies assure us we can have a green and clean planet and economic progress. The only obstacle is limited thinking and the unwillingness to make the leap that we all have to make sooner or later anyway. We need to quicken the impulse toward a change of technology and create the bridges from one technology to another. That’s what that solar fund would do. That’s what tax incentives would do. Likewise, we have to end the incentives for the exploration of fossil fuel, so we don’t continue to use systems which destroy water quality and air quality.

LdB: When you talk about getting beyond limited thinking and quickening the impulse for change, it seems you’re referring to what you’ve called evolutionary governance. Could you say more?

DK: It’s a sense, first of all, that we have the ability to create a new world, not only to seek it. The impulse to seek a new world is part of what’s in the human heart. The ability to create it is in the human spirit.

We have to draw these new forms from that realm of consciousness. They’re there already. We just have to bring them in. We have to prepare ourselves intellectually and spiritually to be the vehicles, the vessels, for that information, and to welcome it, not stop it, or push it away. Everyone has access to it–we have the ability to recreate the world! It’s not like we’re stuck with the world and there’s nothing we can do about it. There’s this feeling of hopelessness: "What can we do? We can’t do anything about it." That’s not true!

LdB: The philosopher Jacob Needleman, in his new book The Soul of America: Rediscovering the Wisdom of the Founders, writes about the need to remythologize the idea of America and about basing this on the archetypes of the founding fathers. You’ve taken that further to include "the founding mothers, our slave ancestors, native America." Would you say more about that, about the spiritual roots of America and what strength we might draw from it?

DK: First of all, our founders were profoundly spiritual persons. They didn’t have any particular religious doctrine they were promoting. They kind of moved away from that when they left England and left the control of the king. They didn’t want to have the Church of England here in the United States. But they did have a sense of connection to profound spiritual principles.

You can find it in the words of our founding documents, in the references to deity, in our symbol of the great seal, and in the eye of divine providence that looks out over the country. There’s a sense that American has a connection to something transcendent. That’s how the country came forward.

One of the themes I’m exploring is this: What about those stars on our flag? Think about that for a moment. We know they represented thirteen colonies at one time. We know they represent fifty states now. But what about those stars?

We need to think about them, because they represent universal energies and the principles they carry, principles that just swept into the life of our nation when it was founded. They’re proof that America has connection with something transcendent. That’s the proof! That’s what those stars are! If we can look at our flag in a different way, we could see that its field of stars stand for the highest expression of human unity.

LdB: We’d have a more spiritual basis for our idea of ourselves as citizens, I would think, or as you say, something more transcendent .

DK: That’s exactly right.

LdB: You state in "Spirit and Stardust" (a speech given in Dubrovnik in June at a conference on the Alchemy of Peacebuilding–see article starting on the back cover) that "in our soul’s forgetting, we become unconscious of our birthright." You’re referring to our birthright, which goes all the way to a cosmic level.

DK: The founding fathers were aware of that. No question about it. You can look at the principles: self-evident truths, inalienable rights. They had a connection to universal principles. That’s what those stars are. Stars connect us to the Universe.

LdB: Cosmology and politics come together.

DK: They always do! It’s when we separate ourselves from the stars that we create a disaster. That’s actually the meaning of the word "disaster": desastrate, "to be torn asunder from the stars." We’re experiencing disaster because we’ve lost our connection to cosmology.

How we avoid living a disaster becomes the question. What I’m trying to do is to demonstrate the ways in which we connect with each other as a people.

LdB: You talk frequently about our interconnectedness. What about our connection to the non-human? I’d like to draw on cultural historian Thomas Berry. He writes that one major difficulty with the U.S. Constitution was that it was written with rights attributed solely to the human, and not to the non-human. Berry also writes about Pax Gaia, peace for all beings, as opposed to Pax Romana, or Pax Americana.

DK: I think there’s a misinterpretation of theology when it talks about the human bringing the Earth into subjection. We’re to come into harmony with nature, not to dominate it, because in dominating it, we separate ourselves from nature. To achieve harmony with the Earth is to live in grace and freedom. Chief Seattle said "the Earth doesn’t belong to us, we belong to the Earth." Peace for all living beings, for the biosphere is our inalienable right.

LdB: In an essay entitled simply "Government," you wrote that :"peace is an active presence of the capacity for a higher evolution of human awareness," that it’s not simply the absence of war. You want to create a cabinet level Department of Peace (see sidebar, page 19), where "peace becomes inevitable," and "non-violence is the organizing principle." How can we imagine such a thing in a country which is accustomed to imagining war and thus creating war?

DK: We have to imagine it. Shiva and Vishnu, the principles of destruction and creativity exist side by side, simultaneously. The question is what do we stand for? What principles do we let work through our heart? What principles do we let play in our soul? As we’re seeing this war fervor being developed, we need, similarly, to have a quiet insistence that there be peace.

Peace always begins within each of us. Our ability to create in the world depends on our ability, first, to work to create peace in our own lives. It’s much easier to advocate peace on Earth than it is to be able to bring peace in your own home. Or your own heart.

LdB: Americans like to talk a lot a about freedom. What does true freedom mean to you?

DK: True freedom doesn’t come from a government. It comes from our understanding of the deep connection that we have with the universe, of the knowledge of soul.

LdB: What sustains you personally, what keeps hope alive in you?

DK: The knowledge of soul, of World Soul.