FOR- Fellowship Magazine - Nonviolence in the Arena

In a singular act of courage, a lone congresswoman, Barbara Lee of California, cast the one dissenting vote in a resolution passed 420-1 in the House and 98-0 in the Senate granting President George W. Bush advance authority to use "all necessary and appropriate force" against anyone associated with the attacks of September 11. What manner of woman is Barbara Lee? And why did she refuse to run with the lemmings as they raced off to war?

A self-described former "single mother on welfare, raising two small boys," Lee earned a masters degree in social work from UCLA Berkeley, and served from 1975-87 as chief of staff for Congressman Ronald Dellums, the celebrated antiwar activist and civil rights veteran. In 1990 Lee was elected to the California Assembly, and in 1996 to the California Senate. When, in 1998, after nearly three decades in office, Dellums announced that he was resigning from the Ninth District seat serving the liberal enclaves of Oakland and Berkeley, Lee won the special election without a runoff and was then reelected to a full term. During her campaign, Lee pledged to work to reduce the nation's weapons stockpile and Pentagon spending, and promised to continue Dellums’ efforts to convert closed military bases in Oakland to civilian use.

Lee's brave stand not only continues the legacy of Ron Dellums, but also that of Jeannette Rankin who, like Lee, was a former social worker and who, also like Lee, became the lone Congressional vote against US entry into war with Japan in 1941.

As with Rankin, Lee's advisors and friends tried to talk her out of her decision. "It was an act of conscience," Lee explained, having come to her decision in the midst of prayer. "I was at the National Cathedral in Washington. I went to the memorial service on the Friday after the attacks, and I prayed. I said to myself, 'You've got to figure this one out.' I was dealing with all the grief and sorrow and the loss of life, and it was very personal because a member of my staff had lost a cousin in the Pennsylvania crash. I was thinking about my responsibility as a member of Congress to try to insure that this never happens again. I listened to the remarks of the clergy. Many of them made profound statements. But I was struck by what one of them said: 'As we act, let us not become the evil that we deplore.' That was such a wise statement, and it reflected not only what I was feeling but also my understanding of the threats we continue to face. When I left the cathedral, I was fairly resolved."

Lee had not expected to cast the only vote against the resolution, having anticipated others to join her. One such expected ally, John Lewis, almost did. Representing the Fifth Congressional District of Georgia, Lewis's book, Walking with the Wind, about his years in the front lines of the civil rights movement, is a paean to nonviolence. "I was probably ninety-nine percent of the way there in my heart and soul," Lewis said. "I admire the courage of Barbara Lee. She demonstrated raw courage to stand up and vote the way she did. Several other members wanted to be there also–but at the same time, like me, they didn't want to be seen as soft on terrorism."

In a powerful one-minute speech from the well of the House floor, Lee explained her decision: "I am convinced that military action will not prevent further acts of international terrorism against the United States. . . . We are not dealing with a conventional war. We cannot respond in a conventional manner. I do not want to see this spiral out of control. This crisis involves issues of national security, foreign policy, public safety, intelligence gathering, economics, and murder. Our response must be equally multi-faceted. . . . We must not rush to judgment. Far too many innocent people have already died. Our country is in mourning. If we rush to launch a counterattack, we run too great a risk that women, children, and other noncombatants will be caught in the crossfire."

Claiming "to rely on my moral compass, my conscience, and my God for direction," Lee closed her impassioned statement with a challenge to her fellow lawmakers and all US citizens: "Let us not become the evil that we deplore."

Many have compared the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon to Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor, which prompted Congress to declare war in 1941. That vote, too, had one lone dissenter, Jeannette Rankin, a lifelong pacifist and feminist. The first woman elected to the House of Representatives and Congress in 1917, three years before women in all the states of the US had won the right to vote, Rankin (representing Montana) was one of fifty-six Representatives to vote against entry into World War I and the only one to vote against entry into World War II, thus becoming the only member of the US Congress to vote against our entering both world wars of the twentieth century.

But while Rankin was a committed pacifist, Lee claims she is "not a person who's an absolutist on anything." "I believe in peace. I've been a peace activist all my life," she stated firmly in an 1999 article in The Progressive magazine. "I believe the way to resolve conflict is not through military action and bombing."

According to Lee, the US Congress sacrificed discussion and debate to support an image of national unity in the wake of the shocking and terrifying attacks, effectively rubber-stamping whatever future decisions and actions Bush deemed necessary. In interviews following the September 14 vote, Lee further explained her position. "This was not any vote I cast to demonstrate hostility toward any person or party or the Administration." Her vote against the resolution was based on its "giving up the right of the Congress to talk about when and how and where we go to war."

Lee's solitary vote has sparked an avalanche of telephone calls, letters and emails. Although most have been supportive (eighty percent of the calls and emails from her district and sixty to seventy percent nationally are in favor of her decision), she has also received a significant number of death threats, resulting in the Capitol Police providing her with round-the-clock protection. Overnight, Lee's echoed warning about our not becoming the evil that we deplore is being played out in her own life, with Lee receiving terrorist threats from those who condemn the terrorism of September 11.

Besides physically endangering her life, Lee's principled stand may also have endangered her political career. Although her district is a bastion of progressivism, there are powerful voices from within Oakland itself, where Lee resides, who revile her stand. The president of the Oakland NAACP, Shannon F. Reeves, claims that people from across Lee's district are expressing "shock, dismay, and anger" at being represented by the "one lone member of Congress [who] divides us and prevents residents of the Ninth Congressional District of California from being part of the national unity that is mending fences like nothing in this country ever has."

In casting her dissenting vote, Lee referred to the Gulf of Tonkin resolution which passed with a similar lack of opposition in August 1964, effectively giving President Lyndon Johnson the legal authority–the only legal authority –to wage war against Vietnam. The sole dissenters then were Democratic Senators Ernest Gruening of Alaska and Wayne Morse of Oregon, who predicted that "history will record we have made a grave mistake." However right history has proven them to be, the immediate result was that, like Rankin after her dissenting votes, neither Gruening nor Morse was reelected to office.

But Lee is used to controversy. September 14 was not the first time that she has taken a separate stand against military campaigns and initiatives. In December 1999, Lee was one of only five US Representatives to vote against the renewed bombing of Iraq in retaliation for its refusal to allow weapons inspections by the United Nations. And three months later, in March 1999, she cast the sole dissenting vote against the Clinton administration's plans to bomb Yugoslavia over the conflict in Kosovo. She explained her vote against attacking Kosovo this way: "This is the post-Cold War era. We should be trying to figure out alternatives to war. We should be thinking about how to prevent civil war and genocide and terrorism. But we're not. We're on the same old course. . . . We have the chance to do something in the world. But instead it's just bomb, bomb, bomb."

Committed to programs of international exchange and community empowerment, Lee helped found the Martin Luther King, Jr. Freedom Center for Nonviolence, Equality, Youth and Ecology, which organizes programs in domestic and international violence prevention for young people and adults. She also established a program in mediation and conflict resolution in the California schools. "Kids can't see us bombing, and then listen to us talking about getting guns out of the schools," she has said. "How can we tell them to solve problems without violence, if, in fact, we can't show an ability to solve problems without violence?"

In 1985, eighteen years after Rankin, at the age of eighty-eight, led a coalition of 5,000 women known as the Jeannette Rankin Brigade to petition the US Congress to end the war in Vietnam, in 1985 a bronze statue of her was placed in the United States Capitol Building. More recently, the United States Institute of Peace has named its library after her. President John Kennedy once said of Rankin, "Few members of Congress have ever stood more alone while being true to higher honor and loyalty." Certainly, the same can be said of Barbara Lee.

At fifty-five, Barbara Lee still has a long career, one should say vocation, in public service ahead of her. Her supporters are hopeful that unlike Rankin, Gruening, and Morse, she will be reelected to office. Perhaps someday there will be a statue of Lee at the US Capitol. For now, she stands tall as woman of the hour of our peace movement, and I take heart in her example.

Barbara Lee can be reached at barbara.lee@mail.house.gov, 202/225-2661, 202/225-9817 (fax).

Liliane Kshensky Baxter is Vice Chair of the FOR National Council and a member
of the Executive Committee of the Jewish Peace Fellowship.