Dennis Kucinich (above) revisits the trauma of September 11.

“We Reject War and Work to Establish Peace”
Dennis Kucinich / The Kucinich Report
Speech for Peace & Freedom delivered on September 27, 2025

My Dear Fellow Americans

We are at an inflection point in the history of this country and in the history of the world. I feel this gathering here today is essential to what we hope our world will become, as opposed to what we fear may happen to it. I’m going to focus on Gaza.

Now, the thinking that separates us, the thinking that permits us to observe Gaza with a vicarious horror, a type of protective detachment, makes apparent there is only so much practiced degradation that any of us can contemplate.

But distance in time and space, while comforting us, also mislead.

We have to break the bonds which tether us to separative thinking. We must, as a matter of survival, declare here and now to the world, that we are all Palestinians.

We are all Palestinians. It is our children who are being shot, our families being bombed, our houses being taken and destroyed, our land being poisoned with every type of munition, Ourselves, our very selves are torn asunder. We are all Palestinians.

We hunger and we thirst for food, for water, and for justice. We are starving.

It is through the long-suffering Palestinians that we learn the power of human dignity, and endurance. We see demonstrated an extraordinary instinct for survival, an instinct that reaches and towers also, an instinct that, is almost beyond human understanding. It is the power of human dignity, of endurance of the life instinct which unites us here in Kingston with Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank.

The Palestinians are stripped bare with the curse of nothingness. Yet they possess a power and indomitability that refuses to capitulate to genocide and ethnic cleansing, sanctioned violence and murder most foul.

The Palestinians are a lesson to the entire world about the undeniable power when people stand against injustice.

We reject the separation of time and space and degraded politics. We claim our brotherhood and our sisterhood with the people of Gaza and the West Bank. The strength of the Palestinian people gifts us with extraordinary strength. We’re gifted with the courage of the Palestinian people, with the grace under suffering of the Palestinian people. Humanity cannot be defeated because the Palestinian people cannot be defeated.

Today in Kingston, NY, we gather for peace. We claim our humanity. We claim our unity with the Palestinian people and with all peoples everywhere who face life and death at the hands of any government or institution whose policies and practices are set apart from human values, from human dignity.

As citizens of a common planet, it’s only through understanding our commonalities, to know deeply how much we are all alike, that we set ourselves on a path to redemption, redemption from the chaos of hate, redemption from destruction, redemption from dichotomous thinking of us-versus-them, whoever they are, that which leads us to mutual assured destruction.

So, empowered by the long suffering and fortitude of the Palestinians, with whom we are in communion, we declare that here in Kingston, New York, on Saturday, September 27th, 2025, on behalf of the Palestinian people and of all peoples, that we have a right to be free of the scourge of war.

We have a right and a duty to resist genocide.

We have a right and a duty to resist ethnic cleansing.

We have a right and a duty to resist state sponsored starvation.

We have a right and a duty to resist all practices which fund genocide, ethnic cleansing, starvation, which separate us from our brothers and sisters everywhere in the world.

We have a right to a peaceful existence, free of the machinations of political leaders, political parties, propaganda, conspiracies, incitements, provocations, and media channels which profit from division.

We have a right to governments we can call our own, mindful of the stated purpose of our own government and the preamble of the United States Constitution, to form a more perfect union, to establish justice, to ensure domestic tranquility, to provide for the common defense, (which housing, healthcare, and education are a part of), to support the general welfare, to secure the blessings of liberty.

Those principles have served us to this point in our nation’s history. But war, militarism, and licensing of genocide defeat the purpose of our nationhood.

This then is the moment when inspired by the resistance to extinction of our Palestinian brothers and sisters, we set about the challenge of constructing a new America.

A new America. which builds upon the very concept of the United States as embracing the unity of all peoples.

Therefore, we reject war and work to establish peace. We reject funding governments whose purpose is mass murder.

We support feeding hungry people with bread, not bombs.

We assert that a trillion dollar annual war budget represents death on the installment plan.

We must turn our swords into plowshares, our spears into pruning hooks, and create a beloved nation where all are sheltered, all are fed, all are educated, and all are healthy.

Let us then lift up our eyes.

Let us expand our vision.

Let us leave behind this cloud of confusion and fear, which has descended upon our world.

Let us imagine and work to create an America which is not a nation above nations, but a nation among nations,

Let us merge with the common humanity of the entire world, where we abandon our pretensions of world domination, where we create cooperative economic models which serve all Americans and enable goodwill to prevail among all nations.

Let us work to enshrine principles of cooperation and security through insisting on the principles of the Biological Weapons Convention, the Chemical Weapons Convention, the Small Arms Treaty, the Landmine Treaty, and all nuclear treaties toward the goal of nuclear abolition.

Let us create an America which merges with the advancing tide of humanity. An America which reconnects with the deeper rhythms which support life on the planet.

Let us call forth our true America, the land that we love, a people that we love, regifting the world with a spirit of benevolence, primal human sympathy, compassion, and unity. America.

Thank you very much thank you.

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