"On the Move" // A Speech -- Bono
Last year, Bono spoke at the 2006 National Prayer Breakfast, a meeting of religious and government leaders of all faiths, on the subject of AIDS and poverty relief in Africa. I just bought a little book from Amazon that is a copy of the speech, with graphics and photos. From what I can tell, proceeds of the book to Amazon don't go to charity (which rather surprises me, honestly). So, I think it's important to get the words of this speech out there into the world. As long as I'm not taking away from any money that might be going to needy folks by reprinting the speech here, I think the importance of getting the message out overrides my concern for copyright laws.
If you're wondering what I'm doing here, at a prayer breakfast, well, so am I. I'm certainly not here as a man of hte cloth, unless that cloth is leather. And, it's certainly not because I'm a rock star. Which leaves one possible explanation: I'm here because I've got a messianic complex. Yes, it's true. And for anyone who knows me, it's hardly a revelation.
Well, I'm the first to admit that there's something unnatural... perhaps something unseemly... about rock stars mounting the pulpit and preaching at presidents, and then disappearing ot their villas in the South of France. Talk about a fish out of water. It's very humbling, and I will try to keep my homily brief. But be warned -- I'm Irish.
I'd like to talk about the laws of man. And I'd like to talk about higher laws. It would be great to assume that the one serves the other; that the laws of man serve these higher laws... but of course, they don't always. And I presume that, in a sense, is why you're here.
I presume the reason for this gathering is that all of us here -- Muslims, Jews, Christians -- all of us are searching our souls for how to better serve our family, our community, our nation, our God.
I know I am. Searching, I mean. And that, I suppose, is what led me here, too.
Yes, it's odd, having a rock star here, but maybe it's odder for me than for you. You see, I avoided religious people most of my life. Maybe it had something to do with having a father who was Protestant and a mother who was Catholic and living in a country where the line between the two was, quite literally, a battle line -- where the line between church and state was, well, a little blurry, and hard to see.
I remember how my mother would bring us to chapel on Sundays while my father used to wait outside. One of the things that I picked up from my father and my mother was the sense that religion often gets in the way of God.
For me, at least, it got in the way. Seeing what religious people, in the name of God, did to my native land... and in this country, America, seeing God's second-hand car salesmen on the cable TV channels, offering indulgences for cash. In fact, all over the world, seeing the self-righteousness roll down like a mighty stream from certain corners of the religious establishment.
I must confess, I changed the channel. I wanted my MTV. Even though I was a believer. Perhaps because I was a believer.
I was cynical. Not about God, but about God's politics. Then, in 1997, a couple of eccentric, septuagenarian British Christians went and ruined my shtick -- my reproachfulness. They did it by describing the millennium, the year 2000, as a Jubilee year, as an opportunity to cancel the chronic debts of the world's poorest people. They had the audacity to renew the Lord's call -- and they were joined by Pope John Paul II, who, from an Irish half-Catholic's point of view, may have had a more direct line to the Almight.
"Jubilee" -- why "Jubilee"?
What was this year of Jubilee, this year of the Lord's favor? I'd always read the Scriptures, even the obscure stuff. There it was in Leviticus [25:35]... "If your brother becomes poor," the Scriptures say, "and cannot maintain himself... you shall maintain him.... You shall not lend him your money at interest, not give him your food for profit."
It is such an important idea, Jubilee, that Jesus begins his ministry with this. When Jesus was a young man, he met with the rabbis, impressed everyone, people were talking. The elders said, "He's a clever guy, this Jesus, but he hasn't done much... yet. He hasn't spoken in public before...."
When he does speak, his first words are from Isaiah: "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me," he says, "because He has anointed me to preach good news to the poor." And Jesus proclaims the year of the Lord's favor, the year of Jubilee. (Luke 4:18)
What he was really talking about was an era of grace -- and we're still in it.
So fast-forward 2,000 years. That same thought, grace, was made incarnate -- in a movement of all kinds of people. The Jubilee movement wasn't a bless-me club; it wasn't a holy huddle. These religious guys were willing to get out in the streets, get their boots dirty, wave the placards, follow their convictions with actions. Making it really hard for people like me to keep their distance.
It was amazing. I almost started to like these church people.
But then my cynicism got another helping hand.
Colin Powell, a five-star general, called it the greatest W.M.D. of them all: a tiny little virus called AIDS. And the religious community, in large part, missed it. The ones who didn't miss it could only see it as divine retribution for bad behavior. Even on children. Even when the fastest growing group of people with HIV were married, faithful women.
Aha, there they go again! I thought to myself: Judgmentalism is back.
But in truth, I was wrong again. The church was slow, but the church got busy on this, the leprosy of our age.
Love was on the move. Mercy was on the move. God was on the move.
Moving people of all kinds to work with other they had never met and never would have cared to meet.
Conservative church groups hanging out with spokesmen for the gay community, all singing off the same hymn sheet on AIDS... soccer moms and quarterbacks... hip-hop stars and country stars.... This is what happens when God gets on the move: crazy stuff happens!
Popes were seen wearing sunglasses...
Jesse Helms was seen with a ghetto blaster...
Crazy stuff. Evidence of the Spirit.
It was breathtaking. Literally. It stopped the world in its tracks.
When churches started demonstrating on debt governments listened -- and acted. When churches started organizing, petitioning, and even that most unholy of acts today, God forbid, lobbying on AIDS and global health, governments listened, and acted.
I'm here today in all humility to say: you changed minds; you changed policy; you changed the world.
Look, whatever thoughts you have about God, who God is or if God exists -- most will agree that if there is a God, God has a special place for the poor.
In fact, the poor are where God lives.
Check Judaism. Check Islam. Check pretty much anyone.
I mean, God may well be with us in our mansions on the hill... I hope so. He may well be with us in all manner of controversial stuff... maybe, maybe not. But the one thing on which we can all agree, among all faiths and ideologies, is that God is with the vulnerable and poor.
God is in the slums, in the cardboard boxes where the poor play house. God is in the silence of a mother who has infected her child with a virus that will end both their lives. God is in the cries heard under the rubble of war. God is in the debris of wasted opportunity and lives, and God is with us if we are with them. "If you remove the yoke from your midst, the pointing of the finger and speaking wickedness, and if you give yourself to the hungry and satisfy the desire of the afflicted, then your light will rise in darkness and your gloom will become like midday and the Lord will continually guide you and satisfy your desire in scorched places" (Isaiah 58:9-11).
It's not coincidence that in the Scriptures, poverty is mentioned more than 2,100 times. It's not an accident. That's a lot of airtime, 2,100 mentions.
You know, the only time Christ is judgmental is on the subject of the poor. "As you have done it unto the least of these my brethren, you have done it unto me" (Matthew 25:40). As I say, good news to the poor.
And here's some good news for the President. After 9/11 we were told America would have no time for the world's poor. America would be taken up with its own problems of safety. And it's true that these are dangerous times, but America has not drawn the blinds and double-locked the doors.
In fact, America has doubled aid to Africa. America has tripled funding for global health. The President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, and support, with Congress, for the Global Fund has put 900,000 people onto life-saving anti-retroviral drugs and provided eleven million bed nets to protect children from malaria.
Outstanding human achievements. Counterintuitive. Historic. Be very, very proud.
But here's the bad news. There is much more to do. There's a gigantic chasm between the scale of emergency and the scale of response. And finally, it's not about charity after all, is it? It's about justice.
Let me repeat that: it's not about charity. It's about justice.
And that's too bad. Because you're good at charity. Americans, like the Irish, are good at it. We like to give, and we give a lot, even those who can't afford it.
But justice is a higher standard. Africa makes a fool of our idea of justice. It makes a farce of our idea of equality. It mocks our pieties; it doubts our concern; and it questions our commitment.
6,500 Africans are still dying every day of a preventable, treatable disease, for lack of drug we can buy at any drugstore. This is not about charity; this is about justice and equality.
Because there's no way we can look at what's happening in Africa and, if we're honest, conclude that deep down, we really accept that Africans are equal to us. Anywhere else in the world, we wouldn't accept it. Look at what happened in Southeast Asia with the tsunami. 150,000 lives lost to that misnomer of all misnomers, "mother nature." In Africa, 150,000 lives are lost every month. A tsunami every month. And ti's a completely avoidable catastrophe.
It's annoying, but justice and equality are mates. Aren't they? Justice always wants to hang out with equality. And equality is a real pain.
You know, think of those Jewish sheep-herders going to meet the Pharaoh, mud on their shoes, and the Pharaoh says, "Equal?" A preposterous idea: rich and poor are equal? And they say, "Yeah, 'equal,' that's what it says here in this book. We're all made in the image of God."
And eventually the Pharaoh says, "Okay, I can accept that. I can accept the Jews -- but not the blacks. Not the women. Not the gays. Not the Irish. No way, man."
So on we go with our journey of equality. On we go in the pursuit of justice.
We hear that call in the ONE Campaign, a growing movement of more than two million Americans... left and right together, united in the belief that where you live should no longer determine whether you live.
Preventing the poorest of the poor from selling their products while we sing the virtues of the free market -- that's a justice issue. Holding children ransom for the debts of their grandparents -- that's a justice issue. Withholding life-saving medicines out of deference to the Office of Patents -- that's a justice issue. And while the law is what we say it is, God is not silent on the subject.
That's why I say there's the law of the land, and then there is a higher standard. We can hire experts to write the laws of the land so that they benefit us. So, the laws say it's okay to protect our agriculture but it's not okay for African farmers to do the same, to earn a living?
As the laws of man are written, that's what they say.
God will not accept that.
Mine won't, at least. Will yours?
This is a dangerous idea I've put on the table: my God vs. your God, their God vs. our God... vs. no God. It is very easy, in these times, to see religion as a force for division rather than unity. The reason I am here in Washington, and the reason I keep coming back, is because this is a town that is proving it can come together on behalf of who the Scriptures call "the least of these."
This is not a Republican idea. It is not a Democratic idea. It is not even, with all due respect, an American idea. Nor is it unique to any one faith.
"Do to others as you would have them do to you" (Luke 6:31). Jesus says that.
"Righteousness is this: that one should... give away wealth out of love for Him to the near of kin and the orphans and the needy and the wayfarer and the beggars and for the emancipation of the captives (2.177). The Koran says that.
"Thus sayeth the Lord: 'Bring the homeless poor into the house, when you see the naked, cover him, then your light will break out like the dawn and your recovery will speedily spring forth, then your Lord will be your rear guard." The Jewish Scripture says that. Isaiah 58 again.
That is a powerful incentive: "The Lord will watch your back." Sounds like a good deal to me, right now.
A number of years ago, I met a wise man who changed my life. In countless ways, large and small, I was always seeking the Lord's blessing. I was saying, you know, "I have a new song, look after it." Or, "I have a family, please look after them." Or, I have this crazy idea...."
And this wise man said, "Stop." He said, "Stop asking God to bless what you're doing. Get involved in what God is doing -- because it's already blessed."
Well, God, as I said, is with the poor. That, I believe, is what God is doing. And that si what He's calling us to do.
I was amazed when I first got to America and I learned how much some church-goers tithe. Some tithe up to ten percent of the family budget. Well, how does that compare with the federal budget, the budget for the entire American family? How much of that goes to the poorest people in the world? Less than one percent.
I want to suggest to you today that you see the flow of effective foreign assistance as tithing.... Which, to be truly meaningful, will mean an additional one percent of the federal budget tithed to the poor.
What is one percent?
One percent is not merely a number on a balance sheet.
One percent is the girl in Africa who gets to go to school -- thanks to you. One percent is the AIDS patient who gets her medicine -- thanks to you. One percent is the African entrepreneur who can start a small family business -- thanks to you. One percent is not redecorating presidential palaces or money flowing down a rat hole. This one percent is digging waterholes to provide clean water.
One percent is a new partnership with Africa, not paternalism toward Africa, where increased assistance flows toward improved governance and initiatives with proven track records -- away from boondoggles and white elephants of every description.
America gives less than one percent now. We're asking for an extra one percent to change the world. This will not only transform the lives of millions of people -- and I say this to the military men now -- it will also transform the way those people see us.
One percent is national security, enlightened economic self-interest, and a better, safer world rolled into one. Sounds to me that in this town of deals and compromises, one percent is the best bargain around.
These goals -- clean water for all, school for every child, medicine for the afflicted, an end to extreme and senseless poverty -- these are not just any goals; they are the Millennium Development goals, which this country, America, supports. And they are more than that: they are the Beatitudes for a globalized world.
Now, I'm very lucky. I don't have to sit on any budget committees. And, I certainly don't have to sit where you do, Mr. President. I don't have to make the tough choices.
But I can tell you this: To give one percent more is right. It's smart. And it's blessed.
There is a continent -- Africa -- being consumed by the flames.
I truly believe that when the history books are written, our age will be remembered for three things: the war on terror, the digital revolution, and what we did -- or did not do -- to put the fire out in Africa.
History, like God, is watching what we do.
So today -- with two days left in Hanukkah, in the midst of Advent, with Christmas and Eid on the horizon -- what can we do to change the world? A lot. Here are just a few ideas; feel free to add your own.
1) If you haven't already, consider joining the ONE Campaign. And educate yourself further -- go read about D.A.T.A. (Debt/AIDS/Trade/Africa).
2) Improve your vocabulary by playing this word game, FreeRice -- each word you get right equals twenty grains of rice donated to hungry people.
3) If you have a little money (and it really can be a little, like $25) that you'd like to invest in something worthwhile, why not provide a small-business loan to someone in a third-world country? Check out Kiva.org and change somebody's life forever -- you won't lose a dime.
4) Buy some holiday gifts for people this year from the Product(RED) line (click on "Products" to see what's available and where). A percentage of all profits go directly to suffering people in Africa.
5) If you're American, think hard about how you will vote in the 2008 elections. (It goes without saying, right, that you're going to vote?) Don't vote for a political party; vote for a leader. As you check out the candidates, investigate as much as possible where they stand on the issues of aid to third-world countries, domestic social-justice issues (like health care and education, for instance), etc. The more you know about the candidates, the more your vote will be an informed one, and the more likely it will be that we Americans will vote someone into our highest elected office who will really work hard for the justice and equality that Bono talks about.
I'm leaving this entry unlocked in case you want to link it or anything.
If you're wondering what I'm doing here, at a prayer breakfast, well, so am I. I'm certainly not here as a man of hte cloth, unless that cloth is leather. And, it's certainly not because I'm a rock star. Which leaves one possible explanation: I'm here because I've got a messianic complex. Yes, it's true. And for anyone who knows me, it's hardly a revelation.
Well, I'm the first to admit that there's something unnatural... perhaps something unseemly... about rock stars mounting the pulpit and preaching at presidents, and then disappearing ot their villas in the South of France. Talk about a fish out of water. It's very humbling, and I will try to keep my homily brief. But be warned -- I'm Irish.
I'd like to talk about the laws of man. And I'd like to talk about higher laws. It would be great to assume that the one serves the other; that the laws of man serve these higher laws... but of course, they don't always. And I presume that, in a sense, is why you're here.
I presume the reason for this gathering is that all of us here -- Muslims, Jews, Christians -- all of us are searching our souls for how to better serve our family, our community, our nation, our God.
I know I am. Searching, I mean. And that, I suppose, is what led me here, too.
Yes, it's odd, having a rock star here, but maybe it's odder for me than for you. You see, I avoided religious people most of my life. Maybe it had something to do with having a father who was Protestant and a mother who was Catholic and living in a country where the line between the two was, quite literally, a battle line -- where the line between church and state was, well, a little blurry, and hard to see.
I remember how my mother would bring us to chapel on Sundays while my father used to wait outside. One of the things that I picked up from my father and my mother was the sense that religion often gets in the way of God.
For me, at least, it got in the way. Seeing what religious people, in the name of God, did to my native land... and in this country, America, seeing God's second-hand car salesmen on the cable TV channels, offering indulgences for cash. In fact, all over the world, seeing the self-righteousness roll down like a mighty stream from certain corners of the religious establishment.
I must confess, I changed the channel. I wanted my MTV. Even though I was a believer. Perhaps because I was a believer.
I was cynical. Not about God, but about God's politics. Then, in 1997, a couple of eccentric, septuagenarian British Christians went and ruined my shtick -- my reproachfulness. They did it by describing the millennium, the year 2000, as a Jubilee year, as an opportunity to cancel the chronic debts of the world's poorest people. They had the audacity to renew the Lord's call -- and they were joined by Pope John Paul II, who, from an Irish half-Catholic's point of view, may have had a more direct line to the Almight.
"Jubilee" -- why "Jubilee"?
What was this year of Jubilee, this year of the Lord's favor? I'd always read the Scriptures, even the obscure stuff. There it was in Leviticus [25:35]... "If your brother becomes poor," the Scriptures say, "and cannot maintain himself... you shall maintain him.... You shall not lend him your money at interest, not give him your food for profit."
It is such an important idea, Jubilee, that Jesus begins his ministry with this. When Jesus was a young man, he met with the rabbis, impressed everyone, people were talking. The elders said, "He's a clever guy, this Jesus, but he hasn't done much... yet. He hasn't spoken in public before...."
When he does speak, his first words are from Isaiah: "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me," he says, "because He has anointed me to preach good news to the poor." And Jesus proclaims the year of the Lord's favor, the year of Jubilee. (Luke 4:18)
What he was really talking about was an era of grace -- and we're still in it.
So fast-forward 2,000 years. That same thought, grace, was made incarnate -- in a movement of all kinds of people. The Jubilee movement wasn't a bless-me club; it wasn't a holy huddle. These religious guys were willing to get out in the streets, get their boots dirty, wave the placards, follow their convictions with actions. Making it really hard for people like me to keep their distance.
It was amazing. I almost started to like these church people.
But then my cynicism got another helping hand.
Colin Powell, a five-star general, called it the greatest W.M.D. of them all: a tiny little virus called AIDS. And the religious community, in large part, missed it. The ones who didn't miss it could only see it as divine retribution for bad behavior. Even on children. Even when the fastest growing group of people with HIV were married, faithful women.
Aha, there they go again! I thought to myself: Judgmentalism is back.
But in truth, I was wrong again. The church was slow, but the church got busy on this, the leprosy of our age.
Love was on the move. Mercy was on the move. God was on the move.
Moving people of all kinds to work with other they had never met and never would have cared to meet.
Conservative church groups hanging out with spokesmen for the gay community, all singing off the same hymn sheet on AIDS... soccer moms and quarterbacks... hip-hop stars and country stars.... This is what happens when God gets on the move: crazy stuff happens!
Popes were seen wearing sunglasses...
Jesse Helms was seen with a ghetto blaster...
Crazy stuff. Evidence of the Spirit.
It was breathtaking. Literally. It stopped the world in its tracks.
When churches started demonstrating on debt governments listened -- and acted. When churches started organizing, petitioning, and even that most unholy of acts today, God forbid, lobbying on AIDS and global health, governments listened, and acted.
I'm here today in all humility to say: you changed minds; you changed policy; you changed the world.
Look, whatever thoughts you have about God, who God is or if God exists -- most will agree that if there is a God, God has a special place for the poor.
In fact, the poor are where God lives.
Check Judaism. Check Islam. Check pretty much anyone.
I mean, God may well be with us in our mansions on the hill... I hope so. He may well be with us in all manner of controversial stuff... maybe, maybe not. But the one thing on which we can all agree, among all faiths and ideologies, is that God is with the vulnerable and poor.
God is in the slums, in the cardboard boxes where the poor play house. God is in the silence of a mother who has infected her child with a virus that will end both their lives. God is in the cries heard under the rubble of war. God is in the debris of wasted opportunity and lives, and God is with us if we are with them. "If you remove the yoke from your midst, the pointing of the finger and speaking wickedness, and if you give yourself to the hungry and satisfy the desire of the afflicted, then your light will rise in darkness and your gloom will become like midday and the Lord will continually guide you and satisfy your desire in scorched places" (Isaiah 58:9-11).
It's not coincidence that in the Scriptures, poverty is mentioned more than 2,100 times. It's not an accident. That's a lot of airtime, 2,100 mentions.
You know, the only time Christ is judgmental is on the subject of the poor. "As you have done it unto the least of these my brethren, you have done it unto me" (Matthew 25:40). As I say, good news to the poor.
And here's some good news for the President. After 9/11 we were told America would have no time for the world's poor. America would be taken up with its own problems of safety. And it's true that these are dangerous times, but America has not drawn the blinds and double-locked the doors.
In fact, America has doubled aid to Africa. America has tripled funding for global health. The President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, and support, with Congress, for the Global Fund has put 900,000 people onto life-saving anti-retroviral drugs and provided eleven million bed nets to protect children from malaria.
Outstanding human achievements. Counterintuitive. Historic. Be very, very proud.
But here's the bad news. There is much more to do. There's a gigantic chasm between the scale of emergency and the scale of response. And finally, it's not about charity after all, is it? It's about justice.
Let me repeat that: it's not about charity. It's about justice.
And that's too bad. Because you're good at charity. Americans, like the Irish, are good at it. We like to give, and we give a lot, even those who can't afford it.
But justice is a higher standard. Africa makes a fool of our idea of justice. It makes a farce of our idea of equality. It mocks our pieties; it doubts our concern; and it questions our commitment.
6,500 Africans are still dying every day of a preventable, treatable disease, for lack of drug we can buy at any drugstore. This is not about charity; this is about justice and equality.
Because there's no way we can look at what's happening in Africa and, if we're honest, conclude that deep down, we really accept that Africans are equal to us. Anywhere else in the world, we wouldn't accept it. Look at what happened in Southeast Asia with the tsunami. 150,000 lives lost to that misnomer of all misnomers, "mother nature." In Africa, 150,000 lives are lost every month. A tsunami every month. And ti's a completely avoidable catastrophe.
It's annoying, but justice and equality are mates. Aren't they? Justice always wants to hang out with equality. And equality is a real pain.
You know, think of those Jewish sheep-herders going to meet the Pharaoh, mud on their shoes, and the Pharaoh says, "Equal?" A preposterous idea: rich and poor are equal? And they say, "Yeah, 'equal,' that's what it says here in this book. We're all made in the image of God."
And eventually the Pharaoh says, "Okay, I can accept that. I can accept the Jews -- but not the blacks. Not the women. Not the gays. Not the Irish. No way, man."
So on we go with our journey of equality. On we go in the pursuit of justice.
We hear that call in the ONE Campaign, a growing movement of more than two million Americans... left and right together, united in the belief that where you live should no longer determine whether you live.
Preventing the poorest of the poor from selling their products while we sing the virtues of the free market -- that's a justice issue. Holding children ransom for the debts of their grandparents -- that's a justice issue. Withholding life-saving medicines out of deference to the Office of Patents -- that's a justice issue. And while the law is what we say it is, God is not silent on the subject.
That's why I say there's the law of the land, and then there is a higher standard. We can hire experts to write the laws of the land so that they benefit us. So, the laws say it's okay to protect our agriculture but it's not okay for African farmers to do the same, to earn a living?
As the laws of man are written, that's what they say.
God will not accept that.
Mine won't, at least. Will yours?
This is a dangerous idea I've put on the table: my God vs. your God, their God vs. our God... vs. no God. It is very easy, in these times, to see religion as a force for division rather than unity. The reason I am here in Washington, and the reason I keep coming back, is because this is a town that is proving it can come together on behalf of who the Scriptures call "the least of these."
This is not a Republican idea. It is not a Democratic idea. It is not even, with all due respect, an American idea. Nor is it unique to any one faith.
"Do to others as you would have them do to you" (Luke 6:31). Jesus says that.
"Righteousness is this: that one should... give away wealth out of love for Him to the near of kin and the orphans and the needy and the wayfarer and the beggars and for the emancipation of the captives (2.177). The Koran says that.
"Thus sayeth the Lord: 'Bring the homeless poor into the house, when you see the naked, cover him, then your light will break out like the dawn and your recovery will speedily spring forth, then your Lord will be your rear guard." The Jewish Scripture says that. Isaiah 58 again.
That is a powerful incentive: "The Lord will watch your back." Sounds like a good deal to me, right now.
A number of years ago, I met a wise man who changed my life. In countless ways, large and small, I was always seeking the Lord's blessing. I was saying, you know, "I have a new song, look after it." Or, "I have a family, please look after them." Or, I have this crazy idea...."
And this wise man said, "Stop." He said, "Stop asking God to bless what you're doing. Get involved in what God is doing -- because it's already blessed."
Well, God, as I said, is with the poor. That, I believe, is what God is doing. And that si what He's calling us to do.
I was amazed when I first got to America and I learned how much some church-goers tithe. Some tithe up to ten percent of the family budget. Well, how does that compare with the federal budget, the budget for the entire American family? How much of that goes to the poorest people in the world? Less than one percent.
I want to suggest to you today that you see the flow of effective foreign assistance as tithing.... Which, to be truly meaningful, will mean an additional one percent of the federal budget tithed to the poor.
What is one percent?
One percent is not merely a number on a balance sheet.
One percent is the girl in Africa who gets to go to school -- thanks to you. One percent is the AIDS patient who gets her medicine -- thanks to you. One percent is the African entrepreneur who can start a small family business -- thanks to you. One percent is not redecorating presidential palaces or money flowing down a rat hole. This one percent is digging waterholes to provide clean water.
One percent is a new partnership with Africa, not paternalism toward Africa, where increased assistance flows toward improved governance and initiatives with proven track records -- away from boondoggles and white elephants of every description.
America gives less than one percent now. We're asking for an extra one percent to change the world. This will not only transform the lives of millions of people -- and I say this to the military men now -- it will also transform the way those people see us.
One percent is national security, enlightened economic self-interest, and a better, safer world rolled into one. Sounds to me that in this town of deals and compromises, one percent is the best bargain around.
These goals -- clean water for all, school for every child, medicine for the afflicted, an end to extreme and senseless poverty -- these are not just any goals; they are the Millennium Development goals, which this country, America, supports. And they are more than that: they are the Beatitudes for a globalized world.
Now, I'm very lucky. I don't have to sit on any budget committees. And, I certainly don't have to sit where you do, Mr. President. I don't have to make the tough choices.
But I can tell you this: To give one percent more is right. It's smart. And it's blessed.
There is a continent -- Africa -- being consumed by the flames.
I truly believe that when the history books are written, our age will be remembered for three things: the war on terror, the digital revolution, and what we did -- or did not do -- to put the fire out in Africa.
History, like God, is watching what we do.
So today -- with two days left in Hanukkah, in the midst of Advent, with Christmas and Eid on the horizon -- what can we do to change the world? A lot. Here are just a few ideas; feel free to add your own.
1) If you haven't already, consider joining the ONE Campaign. And educate yourself further -- go read about D.A.T.A. (Debt/AIDS/Trade/Africa).
2) Improve your vocabulary by playing this word game, FreeRice -- each word you get right equals twenty grains of rice donated to hungry people.
3) If you have a little money (and it really can be a little, like $25) that you'd like to invest in something worthwhile, why not provide a small-business loan to someone in a third-world country? Check out Kiva.org and change somebody's life forever -- you won't lose a dime.
4) Buy some holiday gifts for people this year from the Product(RED) line (click on "Products" to see what's available and where). A percentage of all profits go directly to suffering people in Africa.
5) If you're American, think hard about how you will vote in the 2008 elections. (It goes without saying, right, that you're going to vote?) Don't vote for a political party; vote for a leader. As you check out the candidates, investigate as much as possible where they stand on the issues of aid to third-world countries, domestic social-justice issues (like health care and education, for instance), etc. The more you know about the candidates, the more your vote will be an informed one, and the more likely it will be that we Americans will vote someone into our highest elected office who will really work hard for the justice and equality that Bono talks about.
I'm leaving this entry unlocked in case you want to link it or anything.