January 22, 2013 – 40 Years
 
        The March for Life this year is being held January 25, so next week’s issue should report on our Consistent Life activities there.
        Meanwhile, the Red Letter Christians published a “Dialog on What it Means to be Pro-life” for the occasion, with CL Endorser Shane Claiborne and Tony Campolo. It explicitly mentions the consistent life ethic.
        The PBS News Hour broke with the long-standing media bias (which was otherwise still in view) by offering a balanced discussion; Charmaine Yoest of Americans United for Life gave several points from the pro-life feminist point of view, though not labeled as such.
 

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Kansas City Votes on Nuclear Weapons Incentives
 
        The City Hall of Kansas City, Missouri, has a connection to nuclear weapons at the start and now has a connection to trying to keep them going. It was built in the 1930s by the Pendergast political machine, which was essential to getting Harry Truman launched in his political career. Truman is the only individual responsible for making the decision to deliberately use the atom bomb against human populations. When Truman first ran for U.S. Senate in 1934, he had many thousands of “ghost” votes – people whose death didn’t keep them from remaining active in elections. The Pendergast machine saw to that. Recently, it was in this city hall that the City Council decided to give unprecedented financial incentives for a new nuclear weapons parts plant for the “modernization” program.
         Our elections don’t have ghost votes anymore, but can we give the ghosts of Hiroshima and Nagasaki a vote through the fingers of current Kansas City voters?
        On April 2, 2013, a citizen’s petition is scheduled for the ballot: Question 3. See foolish-investment.com for details.
 

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Kansas City Pro-lifers Vote on Nuclear Weapons Incentives
 
        CL is funding a mailing to encourage Kansas City pro-lifers to consider a yes vote on Question 3, using the quote from Fulton Sheen that connects the lack of boundaries and killing of innocent for both, with a web page that also includes quotations from the nuclear strategist Herman Kahn being casual about embryonic deaths and a good quote from our own Julianne Wiley. If anyone has additional authoritative quotations that would be good for educating on connections between abortion and nuclear weapons, please send them to weekly@consistent-life.org.
        Since Peace & Life Connections editor Rachel MacNair is also coordinator of the ballot campaign, readers can count on being updated. If you have any friends in Kansas City, be sure to let them know about it and send them to foolish-investment.com to learn more. 
 

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Quotation of the Week
Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
 
In honor of the holiday observed last Monday
 
        We are called to play the good Samaritan on life's roadside. But one day we must come to see that the whole Jericho road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life's highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it is not haphazard and superficial. It comes to see than an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.