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January 17, 2005
OP-ED COLUMNIST

Out of the Darkness
By
BOB HERBERT

Atlanta - You could get dizzy thinking about the history that has passed in
and out of Ebenezer Baptist Church, which was the spiritual home (and
primary
safe house) of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the civil rights movement of
the 1950's and 60's. There's now a spiffy new church right across the
street,
but the memories of the battles fought and the freedom gained in that
tumultuous period live on in the old building, with its narrow stairways and
creaking
floors, and the basement where so many strategy sessions were held.

On Friday night I had the privilege of joining the actors Martin Sheen, Lynn
Redgrave, Alfre Woodard, Sean Penn, Woody Harrelson and others in a reading
at the old church of Ariel Dorfman's play "Speak Truth to Power: Voices From
Beyond the Dark," which is based on the book "Speak Truth to Power," by
Kerry
Kennedy and the photographer Eddie Adams. The occasion marked the 76th
anniversary of Dr. King's birth (he was only 39 when he was killed) and the
40th
anniversary of his acceptance of the Nobel Peace Prize. Among those in the
audience was Dr. King's widow, Coretta.

"Speak Truth to Power" is about the emergence of courage and moral
leadership in those bleak periods when free expression, religious liberty,
human rights
and even our very humanity are threatened by destructive forces that range
from indifference to murderous brutality. The leadership often comes from
unexpected
sources, like Bobby Muller, an American Marine lieutenant whose spinal cord
was severed when he was shot in the back in Vietnam. He became a champion of
veterans' rights and years later, as a co-founder of the Campaign to Ban
Land Mines, shared the Nobel Peace Prize.

Mr. Muller, in a wheelchair, was also in the audience at Ebenezer on Friday
night .

"Courage begins with one voice," said Oscar Arias Sanchez, the former
president of Costa Rica, who won the Nobel Prize in 1987 for developing a
Central
American peace plan.

Both the play and the book are made up of passages from interviews of men
and women who, in a wide variety of ways, defended human rights in countries
that
span the globe. Dianna Ortiz is an Ursuline nun from New Mexico who went to
Guatemala in the 1980's as a missionary. She was abducted, gang raped and
tortured
by government agents. She said one of the men overseeing the torture
appeared to be American. At one point she was lowered into a pit filled with
the bodies
of men, women and children who had been murdered.

"To this day," said Sister Ortiz, "I can smell the decomposing of bodies
disposed of in an open pit. I can hear the piercing screams of other people
being
tortured."

In a short introduction to Sister Ortiz's interview in the book, Ms. Kennedy
wrote:

"Ortiz's ordeal did not end with her escape. Her torment continued as she
sought answers from the U.S. government about the identity of her torturers
in
her unrelenting quest for justice. Ortiz's raw honesty and capacity to
articulate the agony she suffered compelled the United States to declassify
long-secret
files on Guatemala, and shed light on some of the darkest moments of
Guatemalan history and American foreign policy."

Sister Ortiz now runs a center for survivors of torture.

The most hopeful thing to be drawn from Mr. Dorfman's play and Ms. Kennedy's
book is that effective leadership can come from anywhere, at any time. From
my perspective, this is a dark moment in American history. The Treasury has
been raided and the loot is being turned over by the trainload to those who
are already the richest citizens in the land. We've launched a hideous war
for no good reason in Iraq. And we're about to elevate to the highest law
enforcement
position in the land a man who helped choreograph the American effort to
evade the international prohibitions against torture.

Never since his assassination in 1968 have I felt the absence of Martin
Luther King more acutely. Where are today's voices of moral outrage? Where
is the
leadership willing to stand up and say: Enough! We've sullied ourselves
enough.

I'm convinced, without being able to prove it, that those voices will
emerge. There was a time when no one had heard of Dr. King. Or Oscar Arias
Sanchez.
Or Martin O'Brien, who founded the foremost human rights organization in
Northern Ireland, and who tells us: "The worst thing is apathy - to sit idly
by
in the face of injustice and to do nothing about it."

Copyright 2005
Posted by Miriam 1/17