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School of the Americas Speech

November 20,2011

As the saying goes I am a product of the 60’s which means my adult life was shaped in large measure by the people and the events of that remarkable and turbulent decade and as a result I still firmly believe that “lost causes” are the only causes worth fighting for and that non-violence is the only weapon to fight with.

It is from numerous acts of courage that human history has been shaped. “Each time someone stands up for an ideal or acts to improve the lot of others or strikes out against injustice they send fourth a tiny ripple of hope and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and injustice”. Those words were spoken at the University of Capetown, South Africa in 1966 by Robert Frances Kennedy. They are enshrined on his memorial at Arlington National Cemetery as well and they have been a powerful source of inspiration for my generation ever since.

Whether we choose to acknowledge it or not we are all responsible for each other and the world which is exactly the way it is because consciously or unconsciously we have made it so and while none of us made any of the rules that govern the universe we do make all the rules that govern our own hearts and we are all beneficiaries of the numerous heroic strangers who have gone before us over the centuries and assure us that the world is still a wonderful and safe place despite our fears and we are not asked to be successful, we are only asked to be faithful.

And remember this above all: “One heart with courage is a majority”.

Over the entire history of the human race every truth began as a blasphemy and no one has ever made a contribution of any real worth without self-sacrifice, personal suffering and sometimes even death.

The Irish tell the story of a man who arrives at the gates of heaven and asks to be let in St. Peter says, “Of course, just show us your scars.”  The man says, “I have no scars”. St. Peter says, “What a pity was there nothing worth fighting for”?

My fondest wish for each and every one of you here this morning is that you will find something in your life worth fighting for because when you do you will have discovered a way to unite the will of the spirit with the work of the flesh and then you will be able to help lift up this nation and all its people to that place:

Where the heart is without fear and the head is held high

Where knowledge is free

Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls

Where words come out from the depths of truth

Where tireless striving stretches its arms toward perfection

Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the dreary desert sands of dead habit

Where the mind is led forward by thee into ever widening thought and action

Into that heaven of freedom, my father, let our country awake

Martin Sheen

November 20, 2011