 after spending seven days there. But you know enough to understand the much of what the media and the president have been talking about is absolutely untrue. These are people who suffered for 45 years under a terrible dictatorship, and they're fighting back. And they're trying to build a society where people can live decently. It's a very strange feeling meeting with the leadership of the government. You meet with a guy like Thomas Bohé, who has the unenviable distinction of probably, they call him the most tortured man in the world. You're talking to a guy now who's the minister of interior who was held prisoner by Samosa, who was tortured horribly. Daniel Ortega, who spent eight years in jail fighting for his country's freedom. All of them have been in jail. Many of them have been tortured. And the overwhelming thing that comes out from them is not an anti-capitalism, but a sense of nationalism. For many, many years, their country was dominated and overrun by American interests. Now they want to stand on their own two feet and be a free and independent people. And I think that they're entitled to it. That's basically what it comes down to. They are trying to run their own society in their own way. Their leadership are intelligent people. They are not, to quote Ronald Reagan, loony-tuned characters. Many of the things that we saw were impressive. They're building hospitals. They're building schools. They're educating their children. There's a tremendous sense of energy. You go to the hospitals and the people are proud. You ask the people, and I knocked on many doors. I just went all around to stop people. And you ask them, are you with the government or not? They kind of laugh. They don't quite understand what you're talking about. Of course they're with the government. I have to say, though, that Ronald Reagan is succeeding in many ways. What he wants to do, of course, through the war and through the embargo is to destroy their economy. And he's having that impact. You knock on doors and you talk to people, and the cost of goods is going up. And people are feeling that, and they're hurting. And that's having an impact on the society. The war effort they're having to fight against the countries is taking away tremendous resources, which they would rather be using for education and for their people. And that's hurting them, too. The other thing I think the last thing that I would say at this time, and I've been on the plane for 14 hours so I'm a little tired, is it is totally amazing that, considering the fact they are now fighting a war supported and financed by the United States government, the lack of anti-Americanism. And in fact, the affection and fondness for the American people is amazing. This is, of course, the first time that I've been to Central America. But Central America is America. They are Americans. They play baseball. They play basketball. They watch the same stupid American television programs that we watch. You feel a real kinship for these people, and they want to be part of us. And the second thing is they want Americans to come down and see their country. You can go any place you want. You can talk to anybody that you want to talk to. Now, I'm sure the Nicaraguan government is not perfect. They acknowledge that they have made many mistakes. They have made many mistakes. But they are not afraid to have people come down. One should understand why it is that the President of the United States does not want you to go down, wants to break relationships with them. And they say, please come down. You can go any place you want. One might understand or try to figure out what the motives of the President are. Okay, thank you very much. But anything new? Anything new, did it really? I just came back for a 14-hour trip, so I... There's been some question, though, about you being completely uncritical. Is there anything at all that you would say? That's enough for tonight. I'll have more to say on that. When do we have more to say? Pat Peterson, who was just speaking, has thanked many, many people, but as usual, she forgot to thank herself. And Pat, in fact, has done the bulk of the work in the Sister City relationship. There are times that one wishes one was smarter than one is. It says one looks out at the world and sees the problems, one wishes one knew the answers, and I don't know the answers. I think sometimes one wishes one was dumber than one is so that one doesn't have to look out in the world and see the pain that's out there and the horrible situations that are out there and not know what to do. I think what I would wanna start off with tonight by saying is that really what is going on in terms of the United States' relationship to Nicaragua of course has nothing to do with Nicaragua. The nature of the conflict that now exists is based on the fact that for the last 150 years or so, the United States government in its wisdom has decided that Latin America should be a colony of the United States government and that countries which attempt to stand up and do things for their own people rather than for American corporations are not to be tolerated. What's going on in Nicaragua today, it's not important to get into all the details of whether the Sandinistas are right or wrong on this issue. If we understand that in the last 30 years the United States has overthrown governments in Guatemala, Dominican Republic, they murdered Salvador Allende in Chile, they've overthrown the government of Grenada, they attempted to overthrow the government of Cuba, they overthrow a government of Brazil and now they are attempting to overthrow the government of Nicaragua. I think although all of you know that I am no great supporter of the president of the United States, I think one thing that we can say for him is that he's an honest and straightforward man. What he has said to Daniel Ortega and the people of Nicaragua, he's not gotten involved in these wishy-washy terms of liberalism or international law, he's been quite upfront about it and he said before the people of the world that if you wish to survive as a nation, you can, all that you have to do is get down on your hands and knees and say, uncle, that's all. That's an interesting principle of international relations. What he has said is that we in the United States are strong and powerful and we can destroy you any time we want and all you have to do is get down on your hands and knees or we will send in Rambo and Stilvesta Saloni. The basic crime being committed by the people of Nicaragua today is that the government there has the strange and unusual idea that they should attempt to do something for the people of Nicaragua rather than for the United States corporations. It's a very strange idea for an independent nation to have and if the history of the United States' relationship to Latin America for the last 50 years, which is Samosa, yes, Ortega, no, Batista, yes, Castro, no, Pinochet, mass murderer, torturer, destroyer of democracy, yes, loans, military money, yes. Salvador Allende, democratically elected by the people of Chile, his political party gaining in strength, no, overthrown by the CIA and murdered and 30,000, 40,000 Chileans killed. Yes, Pinochet. When I was a kid going to school and I'm sure all of you had the same experience, we learned something about American history and I think many of us are very proud to be Americans. Many fantastic things. There's a boldness in this country. There's an energy in this country that doesn't exist elsewhere in the world. But what we didn't learn, I think, and what we are not proud of, and I think what we do not intend to accept is that a relationship can be based on brute bully strength and we are not prepared to accept this nation dominating poor nations and weak nations who are trying to do decent things for their people. I think if the sister city relationship means anything and it means a great deal to me and I know it means a great deal to you, it means that we believe that human beings on a face-to-face level are able to communicate with each other, are able to work our problems based on mutual respect and that as Americans what we want of our nation, we want our nation to be bold and brave, but not with guns and not with machine guns and not with napalm. I personally really am not all that impressed by President Reagan's tough, war-like rhetoric. If he wants to do something that's really gutsy and that it's really brave for a guy who does so well on the television, the master of the media, what I would do is challenge him to sit down before the television cameras of the entire world and sit down and talk to Ortega and the other people in Nicaragua and work out the problems based on mutual respect. Does he have the guts to do that? And I'm not sure that he does. I'm not sure that he has the answers to the sharp questions and the challenges that people throughout the third world would be throwing to him. You know, we live in a world today and it really is depressing to think about it. We live in a world today where there are several hundred million people starving to death. They're starving to death right now. We live in a world where my guess is that between all the superpowers and the other nations of the world, close to one trillion dollars are being spent every single year on weapons, on more and more nuclear bombs, on the most sophisticated nerve gases which can wipe people out and paralyze them. And yet with all the brilliance and all the fine technology and all the robots and the great medical research that they do up there in the hospital and all the other hospitals, civilization hasn't advanced one bloody iota for the last thousands of years. All that these people can do is still say to each other, we're strong, you're weak, you do it our way or we're gonna kill you. A very profound civilized remark. I think what we're here today is to show President Reagan and many people who don't have the courage that we have. Because what goes on in this country primarily through the television and through the media is that over and over again, all that the president of the United States has to say is that Nicaragua is communist, Nicaragua is Marxist, Lennox, and now the new thing is Nicaragua is terrorist. And if you say it over 100 times, it now becomes truthful. And then suddenly you see the professional politicians getting less and less bold in saying that maybe the president is wrong. Because you know, appealing to people's hatred and their anger and their desire for revenge is very good politics. The truth of the matter is it has always worked. And it's probably working today. And you're gonna find many college teachers are a little bit less likely to speak out against the social workers, a little bit less likely to speak out against the imperialism that now goes on. And I think what our task is here in Burlington, Vermont, and in the other communities that have sister city relations is to say that we ain't afraid of that and that we reject that mentality. That what the real challenge of civilization today is and the challenge of the United States is. And it's an enormous challenge and it's a difficult challenge and no one has any easy answers. But the real challenge is in a world which is economically disintegrating. The conditions in the third world today are as bad as they have ever, ever, ever been. And the challenge is, the challenge for tough people, Mr. Reagan thinks he's tough, the challenge for a tough person and for a tough society is how do we use our resources, our incredible wealth, our energy, not in military adventurism, but in working with people throughout the entire third world, working with the people in Nicaragua, in cooperation and in mutual respect, working with them so children don't have to starve to death, don't have to die of diseases which these people up there on the hill in our hospital know the answers to, where people can learn to read and write, can learn to relate to each other. That's the challenge that we face. And the guns and the bombs and the countries are going in exactly the wrong direction. What the Sister City program is to me is a human way to say to the people in Nicaragua, we are concerned about your problems, we respect you as human beings, and we wanna work with you cooperatively to build a decent world. Thank you.