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Thank you, Mr. President, Mr. Chairman, distinguished platform guests, officers, members and guests of The Commonwealth Club. I appreciate the opportunity of coming before you this afternoon to speak to you. This is an audience that I rarely have an opportunity to address.

I told the officers that one way to pack a luncheon is to put the word radical in the title of the speech and you'll find that a great deal of people will come. I purposely used the term radical in the title of my speech because that's the way I have been labeled for several months. And I think, unfortunately, in this country we've been preoccupied with labeling people without ever placing in juxtaposition what we mean by that label. We rarely translate that label. We rarely define it. So I'd like to think that Ron Dellums is a complex human being that frankly can't be labeled in one term. So I used the word radical in my title; I leave it up to you to define, in your own minds, what and who Ron Dellums is.

I choose to talk about the issue of life because I don't wish to stand before you as a traditional politician and give you a traditional political speech. I really don't define myself as a politician in the classic sense of the term. My speech may seem a little philosophical at some points, it may even seem a little metaphysical at points. But I think that you and I have got to find a way to talk about the serious human questions that confront us in this country and in the world.

There's something that we try not to think about, we tried desperately to forget. It's the fact that all of us gathered in this room, at some point, are going to die. It's something we, obviously, fight against. But you and I are going to die, because death is inevitable. And I thought about that, if all of us at some point are going to die and if death is, in fact, inevitable, then perhaps the most courageous act that man can engage in is not in the act of dying. But the most courageous act is to engage in the struggle to live, and man's most courageous act, most noble challenge is the challenge of life and enhancing the quality of life. Well, what are the factors that stand in the way of our ability to come together as human beings? Because I'm unalterably committed to the notion that man's most powerful force is not his ability to build and drop the bomb, but in his total and absolute unity. Anything short of total unity of human beings in this country and on the face of this earth is divisive. Absolute unity is our greatest strength, our greatest power, not our ability to build bombs.

But what stands in the way of us coming together as people, what stands in the way of our ability to achieve the glory of life as opposed to the agony of and the preoccupation with death? What stands in the way of our ability to achieve the serenity of peace as opposed to the horror of violence? Or the comfort of plenty, as opposed to the pain of poverty? Or the strength of total unity and freedom and justice as opposed to the divisiveness of racism and discrimination? And these are the human questions that I think you and I have got to deal with. Because if you agree with me that man's most courageous act is his ability to engage in the struggle to live and in the battle of life, then that means that we've got to struggle against those evils that pit us against each other. Black against white, young against old, man against woman, Jew against gentile.

So let's look at some of the factors. Scientists over the past few years have been predicting, with great regularity, that if we continue to destroy our environment at the rate in which we are, that we may not be able to sustain life on the face of this earth, ten years, 20 years from now. And these are scientists, not demagogues. These are scientists engaged in intellectual discourse and not rhetoric. And if the scientists' predictions are true, and that is that, perhaps, the curtain is falling on Act III of the big show, namely, human life on the face of the earth, then isn't it absurd for us to continue to engage in the rhetoric of who's a nigger and who's a honkie, who's a Communist, who's non-Communist? Who's the poor and who's the non-poor? Who's the welfare recipient, who's the non-welfare recipient? Who's the responsible and who is the irresponsible? But we've allowed ourselves to be pit into that kind of divisiveness.

If, in fact, the world is in desperate shape, if it is true that 40 percent of oxygen-producing organisms in the ocean have already died, if it is in fact true that species are dying, if it is true that we are endangered in this country and in the world because of our exploitation of the environment and the ecology, then it seems to me that it's in the best interest of all of us in this country and in the world to come together as a family of nations to deal with our self-interest, our common self-interest, survival of mankind on the planet Earth. But rather than move aggressively to achieve a sense of peace and cooperation in the world, what have we done? Let's look for a moment at our approach to foreign aid.

It has been suggested many years ago that we commit 1 percent of our gross national product to humanitarian aid in the world. Yet, we find politicians in the Congress and the Senate opposed to spending $9 billion to achieve some sense of humanity in those nations who are less fortunate than us. Because maybe it's not expedient to take that position in terms of one's ability to face the electorate and indicate clearly that you've cut back taxes. But we will spend 30 and 40 billion dollars a year waging war and death and destruction in Indochina. We can continue to have a Defense Department budget of over $60 billion a year, but we can't afford $9 billion to find some way of coming together as a family of nations in the world. We can't find it within ourselves to project ourselves as a nation preoccupied with the issue of peace, because the common self-interest is survival of the man and we'd better start dealing with the desperate straits that the world is in, in terms of our ability to survive as people.

When the United Nations took a position that mainland China shall be involved in the United Nations, some of us became very reactionary in our position. We said, "Why should we take in a Communist nation?" It seems rather ridiculous and absurd to me to continue to ignore, continue to be preoccupied with the position that chooses to ignore a nation so large with so many people if we, in fact, are serious about the issue of world peace and world cooperation. And some of us feel now that we must reject the United Nations because no longer are we in the position to dominate the direction of the United Nations. But, I would suggest to you gentlewomen and gentlemen of this audience, that that is a reactionary position. Because if we, in fact, are going to achieve that kind of peace, then China must be involved in the UN.

Some of us rally to the position that we should cut back on all of our foreign aid. We should stop all of our commitments to multilateral agencies. We want now to be advocates of isolationism, which, in my estimation, would be a very dangerous posture if this country chose to pursue that course. Just the other day, while at one level we talk about peace and freedom and justice and humanity, self-determination and democracy as a basis for our commitment in Vietnam, on the floor of the House, two days ago, we voted to end the embargo against Rhodesian chrome. We now have joined South Africa and Portugal as the only two nations in the world who have blatantly now violated the UN sanctions against Rhodesia, our international obligation. It could not be an issue of need; we have 4.45 million tons of high-grade chrome. The present administration already has a bill on the Senate side, Senate Bill 773, that asks that we unload 1.3 million tons of chrome as excess stockpile. So that that decision can only be defined as a victory for the forces of racism and reaction in the world.

We can't play it both ways. South Africa, unfortunately, does not see people of color as human beings able to move in freedom and justice across their land. We all live in a nation of democracy committed to peace, committed to freedom, but we have made no statement about the fact that many major corporations are involved in economic support of South Africa. And we see no contradiction in that position, but I do. It stands in the way of our ability to achieve the kind of world that we're all concerned about.

We continue to use military appropriations as our major commitment in foreign aid, as opposed to humanitarian aid to nations who desperately need the help. We continue to be involved as a nation concerned about war and death and destruction. Let's think for just a moment. Why is it that us old folks, for the most part, don't engage in war? You ever thought about that? Because those of us who have been on the face of this earth long enough, most of us, love life so desperately that we choose not to risk it. But we'll send the children. Many of us say, "I can't go fight in Vietnam, but I think it's a just war because I have a job, but send the children. I have a business, but send the children. I have family commitments, but send the children. I have a concern in this community, but send the children." And when the children of America have asked us, "Why should we go fight and die?," we don't answer them with specifics; we answer them in abstractions. We say, "Son, you're fighting for democracy." "What does that mean?" "I don't know, but it's good. Go fight and die."

And when they come back from war, what has changed? Why did they go give up their lives? Some of them with their arms, legs blown away, bodies crippled. Some of them would never return, and we'd never answer those questions. Now that I'm in Washington, I can go to the Arlington Cemetery when my family or friends come back and I have to take them on the tour, you know. And so, you can ride a bus around the Arlington Cemetery, and a very attractive, young stewardess sitting in the front of the trolley says, "By 1980, all of the graves in Arlington Cemetery will be filled." And nobody ever says why. Nobody ever says for what reason. No one ever says, for what purpose do we send the children to fight and die in insane adventurisms throughout the world?

Many of us have become pompous in our commitment to death and destruction, but I would suggest something to you that many of you in the room may disagree with. We have not engaged in war as a nation out of compassion; we've done it out of fear. We look back to the Second World War and we said, we stood up in a humanitarian, compassionate effort. But why did six million Jewish people have to die before we became involved in that struggle, if we were so compassionate and so humanitarian? We engaged in that war at the point where we saw the fear to ourselves. Engaged in the war in Indochina because of fear, communism, major bugaboo. That is a very simplistic view of the world. We can't continue to shape America's foreign policy on the basis of who the black hats and the white hats are; who the good guys and the bad guys are. The world is much too complex for that.

This nation is, perhaps, one of the most powerful, if not the most powerful nation in the world. It has to find a way of relating, and we're going to have to be in a position to relate to other nations who disagree with us politically and who shape their own institutions and their own economics and their own politics as it fits their lifestyle.

But we continue to perpetuate the hostilities. We've built a monument to madness. We pin a medal on you if you destroy human life on the battlefield. We've made freaks not of nature but of mankind by dropping bombs, by killing and destroying. Many of our young people have come back from Southeast Asia and said, "Yes, we were involved in war crimes in Indochina." Young whites have come back and said, "Yes, I was a racist in Vietnam. I did see the Vietnamese people as slant eyes, slope heads, gooks and dinks. I now understand that I was not fighting some courageous war. That we were out there in the rice fields destroying human life, killing men, women and children." We now have documented proof, but we continue this sort of absurdity. We mount podiums talking about how democratic and how committed to freedom we are. Yet, in our foreign aid deals we will not strike Brazil out when we have dramatic documentation of terrorism in Brazil. We continue to allow monies to go to Portugal, but Portugal continues to exploit Mozambique and Angola and other African nations. And where is the continuity, where is the consistency as we approach the world, if we're going to survive as people.

Let's turn for a moment to our domestic policies. We are, in fact, victims of inflation in the country today. And rather than dealing with the basic causes, we address ourselves to the symptoms. So we have wage price freezes. A wage price freeze only addresses the symptoms, and I'm not an economist, but historically when this nation has been immersed in inflation, it has been when we have expended extraordinary amounts of our resources in war and death and destruction, when a great deal of our resources have been draining off of the domestic economy into war. We're not going to deal with the issue of inflation solely with wage price freezes in a vacuum. We're going to have to deal with not the question of whether we spend money, but where we spend money and how we spend money. Because my belief is that if we turned around and said, "Let us address the human misery in this country," we could handle the question of inflation.

If we rebuilt the cities that are now monuments to man's madness and not his genius, we could create jobs, which provides money, which means greater purchasing power, which means greater demands, which means a greater economy, a healthier economy. If we built the houses we desperately needed in America, not just for the poor, not just for the working class, but for all human beings, we're reaching a point in time where that is becoming a crisis for all of us, we would have money generated into our economy. If we said health, for example, is something that all human beings in this country should have a right to irrespective of their class or color or education, we could create jobs.

But let me take a point of departure now for a moment because I want to point out the hypocrisy of, the elitism of these leaders and much of our politics. I am now the Honorable Ronald V. Dellums, Democrat, California, and I get all the free medical care I choose to have. But let me tear up my identification card and say, "I resign from the United States Congress" - walk out the west front door of the House and say, "I quit." Now give all of the people in the country that which I had as a congressman. I would be labeled as a radical extremist, socialist, Communist, plotting the overthrow of the United States, and we all know that's true. But if I were to paste together my identification card, walk back into the Congress and say, "I changed my mind. I choose to continue to be a legislator." Then they'd say, "Fine, Mr. Dellums, you may have all of the benefits that you had before because they accrue to your station in life, sir."

The point I'm trying to make is that the issues raised by the oppressed, by the disadvantaged, by the racial minorities, by the poor, by the working poor, by the elderly, are not extreme issues, because there are people in this country who have those very same things, if you have enough money and enough power and enough stature and enough prestige. You see, if by some magic I were able to get the Ron Dellums comprehensive health bill on the floor of Congress and we resolved ourselves into the committee of the whole to discuss this landmark legislation, some gentleman would rise to his feet. The chairman would say, "For what purpose does the gentleman rise?" "I rise in opposition to the legislation." He would speak brilliantly for five minutes against the legislation and in his closing 15 seconds, he would say, "I urge my colleagues on the floor of Congress to defeat this legislation on the grounds that it's creeping socialism." And then, since it would be my bill, I would then rise to my feet. "Will the gentleman yield?" "I yield to the gentleman from California" (because we're very polite in the Congress, even if we don't agree with each other).

It's a very dignified place, you get cut up with a smile and with a great... I'd say, "Would the gentleman yield for a few questions? Has the gentleman ever received free medical care from the House position?" Because we have an entire staff to take care of us because we make important decisions that affect many people's lives, so we have to stay healthy. He would reluctantly then say, "Yes." Second question, "Will the gentleman yield further?" "Yes." "Have you ever received free medicine from the House position?" He would say yes. I would say, "When you needed to be hospitalized at Walter Reed or Bethesda Hospital, were you treated as a private, a PFC or were you treated better than the general?" "The latter." I would say, "I thank the gentleman for his candid responses." I would suggest to him if that's not creeping socialism, what is it?

But for the elite, you see, for the elite, and that's the point that I would like very much to drive home to you, is that some of us, because of our station in life, have benefits that people because of their lack of that station do not have. But it is not because what they want is so evil. But they don't have the power, you see, to get it as part of the amenities that accrue to their station in life. And so, is it so radical to say, shouldn't all the people have that which I am able to have by virtue of my stature? Why should I be treated as a human being with all kinds of services and benefits, merely because I'm a congressman? I should be able to have those because I'm a human being in the United States of America. But, unfortunately, that's not true.

So we get caught up in the hypocrisy. We mouth the podium talking about welfare to the poor, but not welfare to the wealthy. We ask the poor person who walks into a welfare office, who says I'm desperate, I can't feed my family, give me welfare. We say, "You must liquidate most of your remaining resources in order to be eligible for federal funds." But when we made the decision to guarantee a quarter of a billion dollars for Lockheed, we didn't ask them to liquidate a dime. Not for the rich, but for the poor. We castigate welfare; we talk about welfare reform, but we never talk about subsidy reform. We never talk about ending farm subsidies or a depletion of allowances, special provisions and loopholes in a tax structure that deny America the utilization of $50 billion a year every year. But we'll fight diligently to finance SST. But we'll fight against a billion-dollar addition to the education of our young, which is a substantial and major investment in the future of this country. And isn't that very hypocritical?

And so, welfare obviously can't be the question, because we give welfare out all the time. It's just to whom, to what person, to what class? And so we've pit ourselves against each other rather than coming together as human beings. And these are the critical issues that I think you and I have got to deal with. Instead of making the commitment to solve the human problems in the country, which would generate employment, we've passed a bill to make a few jobs raking leaves or cleaning chalkboards. But if we decided to deal with mass transit, with the environment, with education, with health, with housing, with all the other crippling problems that we have, with crime, we'd have the jobs. We'd have a vitalized economy. But we can't have it both ways trading off money into war and death and destruction, and then trying to solve the problems of the world with hostilities and not with some sense of humanity.

We call guaranteed annual income a socialistic program, but I would suggest to you, gentlemen and gentlewomen in the audience, that how can you oppose guaranteed annual income and then not flip the coin over and say, "if we're not going to have guaranteed annual income, then let's have full-employment economy." You can't have it both ways. You're going to have to spend money some kind of way, either to train people in an open full economy, or if we suggest, as most economists have, that a full-employment economy is not viable in this country, then we've got to build a residual institution to get income into the hands of people so they can live in pride and dignity, unless we assume the position that we can write off an entire class or an entire generation of people. I would suggest to you that if we did, it would be antithetical to our goals and our stated purposes as a democratic and free society.

We no longer can engage in the politics of fear and divisiveness, and in the closing minutes all I'm trying to suggest to you is that our strength is in our total unity. And one man who saw that very clearly, among many who never became famous, was a man called King who understood that point very clearly. And in his short period of time that he walked across the face of this earth, he went a very long distance. He went from Montgomery to Memphis and from mere manhood to ultimate martyrdom and from the depths of misery to the top of the mountain. I would suggest to you that if he could go that distance in that short period of time, then you and I in this room, black, brown, red, yellow, and white, can join hands to take America on a journey, a much needed one, from madness to humanity, from exploitation to equality, from racism to freedom and from war to peace. I join you in that effort. Thank you very much.

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