Kate Hudson has been chair of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament since 2003. She is a leading anti-nuclear and anti-war campaigner nationally and internationally. She is also author of CND Now More than Ever: The Story of a Peace Movement. www.cnduk.org
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13-02-2007 (2.89 MB)
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Kate Hudson - Transcript
One day, when I was a child, my father put a poster up at home. It was a quotation from Che Guevara, and it said, 'Let me say, at the risk of seeming ridiculous, that the true revolutionary is guided by great feelings of love.' It somehow seemed compelling but I wasn't quite sure what it meant. My father was happy to explain: 'It means he will act to try and change the world and make it better for everybody, because he loves all people, not just a few'. The all-embracing nature of that love seemed remarkable to me, and the active nature of it too. That one sentence has inspired me probably more than anything else.
In recent years that sentence has come to my mind again, as I have become more involved with the peace movement. As a CND activist, I've had the privilege to meet a great number of people who've worked tirelessly, often over many decades, to try and prevent the suffering and sorrow of war, and to ensure that the great tragedies of Hiroshima and Nagasaki will never be repeated. Indeed, the story of CND is the story of ordinary people's struggles: to shape a world without nuclear weapons and war, based on legality and morality; to make our governments responsive and accountable over our right to stay alive, our right to breathe air free of radioactive pollution, our right to say no to the indiscriminate killing of other peoples.
Whether or not the individuals involved would think of it in this way or not, I don't know, but I would say they are motivated by a love for humanity. And I certainly don't think this is a minority sentiment in society. I was very struck, by the selfless motivation of those who protested against war on Iraq on February 15th, 2003. Before the big anti-war demos of recent years, the largest demonstrations since the second world war had been the CND marches of the early 1980s. People demonstrated in their hundreds of thousands against siting cruise missiles in Britain, because they feared that a nuclear war would be fought in Europe. This was a matter of life and death to us, and we protested for our own survival.
But when 2 million people demonstrated on February 15th 2003, they were not marching to protect themselves. They were protesting against a war on a country they will never see, for a people they will never know. For me, that demonstration was a true expression of love for humanity, in action. For me, that love for humanity is the true heart of the peace movement, and it is something that we can all share and demonstrate.
reposted from: http://www.thinkhumanist.org/p.php?file=2007-02-12_katehudson.mp3
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