The Shameless Agitator Award
Past Recipients
2003
December 19, 2003
Mark Morford
Mark's columns are always in-your-face and thought-provoking.
A true shameless agitator, indeed.
Here is an excerpt from
Saddam, So Not Worth It:
This is America's biggest wonder, and its
ugliest flaw: a nasty short-term memory.
But whatever. Most lockstep Americans do not
care that Saddam was never a threat. Most do not care about how many Iraqi
children have died, or that in just the first days of the war, U.S. forces
killed far more innocent civilians than were killed by those non-Iraqi
terrorists in the WTC (4,300,
to be more specific). Most do not care that the other 25 despotic heads
of state out there right now who are far worse than Saddam are not,
apparently, quaking in their dictatorial boots.
Most Americans do not care that somewhere,
Osama is probably cheering (hey, he hated Saddam, too). They do not care
that, what with our outward display of savagery, new America-loathing
terrorists are being spawned faster than BushCo's war machine can possibly
keep up with them.
They care only for waving the bloody flag. They
care only for the jingoistic PR spin and the hollow sophomoric neocon
punditry of Fox News and enough oil to fuel the Expedition for another year.
This is what matters most. Kill 'em all, let Halliburton sort 'em out.
Read the whole
column.
December 12, 2003
Studs
Terkel
From the
introduction to
Hope Dies Last:
As we enter the new millennium, hope appears to
be an American attribute that has vanished for many, no matter what their
class or condition in life. The official word has never been more arrogantly
imposed. Passivity, in the face of such a bold, unabashed show of power from
above, appears to be the order of the day. But it ain't necessarily so.
Letters to the editors of even our more
conservative papers indicate something else, something that does not make
the six o'clock news: a stirring show of discontent in the fields, a growing
disbelief in the official word.
This is not a new story. It is a strain that
has run through the century past, though not as in extremis as in this one…
There was always pressure from below: from beleaguered and embattled farmers
coming out of the woods; from big-city neighborhood alliances, defying
evicting bailiffs; from a threatened march on Washington by black trade
unionists, leading to the passage of the Fair Employment Practices Act; and
even from some forgotten man who swung from a chandelier during a
Waldorf-Astoria dinner of baffled industrialists, shouting "Social
security!" It was the very first time I had ever heard that phrase.
Naturally, he was subjected to psychiatric care. Of course, that loner
didn't cause social security to come to be, but he did help it along. At
least I knew what it meant when, during the New Deal, it came to pass.
These troublemakers were, by definition,
activists (active: 1. In action, moving. 2. Causing or initiating change. 3.
Engaging, contributing, participating). They felt that what they did counted
and that they themselves counted...
[...]
In all epochs, there were at first doubts and
the fear of stepping forth and speaking out, but the attribute that spurred
the warriors on was hope. And the act. Seldom was there a despair or a sense
of hopelessness. Some of those on the sidelines, the spectators, feeling
helpless and impotent, had by the very nature of the passionate act of
others become imbued with hope themselves.
Today, from unexpected sources, comes a
growing challenge to the official word. Not only among peace advocates, the
silent as well as the outspoken, or among environmentalists, or among
feminists, but also among small investors cheated by corporate Enronism, as
well as those involved in other causes too numerous to recount. It may not
be the stuff that makes a TV sound bite, but it's the stuff of neighborhood.
It's the stuff set off by those who stepped forth and made the word activist
a common noun in our vocabulary; a new vocation…
Activists have always battled the odds. But
it's not a matter of Sisyphus rolling that stone up the hill. It's not
Beckett's blind Pozzo staggering on. It's more like a legion of Davids, with
all sorts of slingshots. It's not one slingshot that will do it. Nor will it
happen at once. It's a long haul. It's step by step. As Mahalia Jackson sang
out, "We're on our way"--not to Canaanland, perhaps, but to the world as a
better place than it has been before.
Read the whole
introduction.
November 28, 2003
Tony Kushner
From an
interview
with Mother Jones, November-December
2003:
MJ: What about the Democratic Party? Can it effectively oppose
Bush?
TK: I have said this before, and I'll say it again: Anyone that
the Democrats run against Bush, even the appalling Joe Lieberman, should be
a candidate around whom every progressive person in the United States who
cares about the country's future and the future of the world rallies. Money
should be thrown at that candidate. And if Ralph Nader runs -- if the Green
Party makes the terrible mistake of running a presidential candidate --
don't give him your vote. Listen, here's the thing about politics: It's not
an expression of your moral purity and your ethics and your probity and your
fond dreams of some utopian future. Progressive people constantly fail to
get this.
The GOP has developed a genius for falling into lockstep. They didn't
have it with Nixon, but they have it now. They line up behind their
candidate, grit their teeth, and help him win, no matter who he is.
MJ: You're saying progressives are undone by their own
idealism?
TK: The system isn't about ideals. The country doesn't elect great
leaders. It elects fucked-up people who for reasons of ego want to run the
world. Then the citizenry makes them become great. FDR was a plutocrat. In a
certain sense he wasn't so different from George W. Bush, and he could have
easily been Herbert Hoover, Part II. But he was a smart man, and the working
class of America told him that he had to be the person who saved this
country. It happened with Lyndon Johnson, too, and it could have happened
with Bill Clinton, but we were so relieved after 12 years of Reagan and Bush
that we sat back and carped.
In a certain sense, Bush was right when he called the anti-war
demonstrations a "focus group." We went out on the street and told him that
we didn't like the war. But that was all we did: We expressed an opinion.
There was no one in Congress to listen to us because we were clear about why
they couldn't listen. Hillary Clinton was too compromised, or Chuck Schumer
-- and God knows they are. But if people don't pressure them to do better,
we're lost.
MJ: Is there a tension between the more analytic,
complaint-oriented side of your personality, of your work -- it's everywhere
in your plays -- and this more pragmatic view of politics?
TK: I think what one has to do is to ask oneself, "Do you want to
have agency in your own time?" If you really believe that it's your place to
leave the world a better place than it was when you arrived, then how do you
get the power? In this country, the most powerful country on earth, you get
it by voting the right people into power. There are means of getting the
power out of the hands of the very rich and the very wicked. It still
flabbergasts me that people didn't see this during the last presidential
election. We had had 12 years of Reagan and Bush to prepare us for this
outcome. It couldn't have been clearer who we were dealing with. George W.
Bush was -- is -- a little robot programmed by his daddy to punish Saddam
Hussein and get as much money for the petrochemical bandits. It's absolutely
jaw-dropping that Democrats saw that and decided instead that they wanted to
send a message to their own party that they weren't happy with it for some
relatively minor offense. Why didn't we turn out in vast numbers for Gore?
Why did we vote for Ralph Nader or not at all? We would absolutely not be in
Iraq today if we had a Democratic president in the White House, and I don't
need to know any more than that.
Read the whole interview
November 21, 2003
Lindis Percy
Photo copyright Associated Press
For scaling the gates of Buckingham Palace while wearing a
fluorescent jacket and hanging an American flag upside down (a distress
signal), along with the words "Bush not welcome." The 61-year
old grandmother stayed on the
gates in protest for more than two hours.
Read the
news
articles.
View additional photos
here,
here,
here and
here.
November 14, 2003
Natalie Goldberg
From an
interview in
The Sun by Genie Zeiger:
Zeiger: In a world with so much suffering, what's
the point of sitting in a cafe and writing?
Goldberg: Writing practice is always political in that
you're not blending into the majority; you're not just thinking about what
you're told to think. My writing is political, even if what I write about
isn't. The act of writing is the act of speaking up, of being alive. When
you're alive and connected and awake to details, you're less likely to be
quiet when bombs are dropping. One reason we're so quick to drop bombs is that
we see the world as abstract and removed. If everyone in our country had a
regular writing practice and a true relationship to their mind, we wouldn't be
as likely to swallow slogans or be ruled by fear.
November 7, 2003
Jim Hightower
From an
interview in
The Progressive:
Q: What's behind this revolt?
Hightower: Bush and the corporate kleptocrats have stomped on too many
people and left too many people out of the system, and those people are now in
rebellion. It's not just poor people they are holding down but the middle
class, as well. I have a favorite bumper sticker I saw on a pickup truck last
year in Austin. It said, "Where are we going? And what am I doing in this hand
basket?"
Most people have a sense that things have gone terribly wrong. It's not just
some giveaways to the rich and the rigging of regulatory rules. It's something
fundamental. The very idea of America is being stolen, and people are
sensing that with a tremor within their hearts. They are taking away this
core notion of the common good, this idea that we are all in it together. They
are diverting America from our historic striving towards egalitarianism, which
is why America exists. It's the thing that makes us unique in history. That's
what people are sensing. We are going down the wrong path.
Q: Is "Bushco," as you call it, a mere continuation of corporate
dominance of our politics or is there something unique about it? You write in
your book, "The White House has been the corporate feed and greed store for
some time now, way before Bush," and yet you seem to see something new here.
Hightower: What's new is that the White House itself has now been
corporatized. It's not politicians working for the corporate interests. They
are the corporate interests. That's where Bush came from, and Cheney and
Rumsfeld.
Q: In 2000, they bragged that they wanted to run the country like a
company.
Hightower: And which company did they have in mind? Enron? But that's
exactly the point. The corporation is a very narrow, autocratic, secretive,
hierarchical organization that exists only to fatten the bottom line of the
biggest investors, which include the top executives, of course. It has no
other purpose.
It's not surprising we see this gang looking very tense any time anybody asks
them a question. They're not used to being questioned. It's not surprising
that they would act in secrecy because that's how they operate. It's not
surprising that they would declare a war and expect everyone to go along with
it because that has been their experience as corporate executives.
Read excerpts from his newest book,
Thieves in High Places:
Under
the Radar
Veil
of Ignorance
Get
with the People
Now
is Our Time!
October 31, 2003
Cher
Cher called in to C-SPAN this week to describe her recent
visit to the wounded soldiers at the
Walter Reed Army Medical Center.
You can read the entire
transcript of
her call at DailyKos. Thanks to
Left is Right for providing the
link so that you can
watch it online. (Go
here
to watch. You'll need Real Player.)
The Washington Times has a
story
about her call as well.
Here are some of her comments that struck me:
...why are none of ... Cheney, Wolfowitz, Bremer, the
President, why aren't they taking pictures with all these guys...because...I
don't understand why these guys are so hidden and why...and why there aren't
pictures of them because you know, talking about the dead and the
wounded...that's two different things but these wounded are so devastatedly
wounded.
[...]
...I go all over the world and I must say that the news we
get in America has nothing to do with the news that you get outside of this
country and I think that's why people don't ...people don't understand why
so many of the allies did not...you know, our usual allies did not join us
because if you get outside the United States you hear a different kind of
news you know.
[...]
...I think my favorite source outside the US is BBC because
they are our allies but you still get...on the nightly news you get...you
know, much more coverage and I think much more honest coverage...I don't
know, I guess they're not...well...they're independent so they're not owned
by any of the major corporations that are... you know, have vested interest
in this war.
I never thought I'd ever give a Shameless Agitator Award to
Cher. Boy does she deserve one! Thank you Cher for speaking your
mind, and for speaking what is on all of our minds.
October 24, 2003
Barbara Kingsolver
Barbara Kingsolver is one of my favorite authors.
The Poisonwood Bible and
Prodigal Summer are my two most favorite novels.
Small Wonder, her collection of essays, is excellent. Her essay
A Fist in
the Eye of God is a great primer on the dangers of genetic engineering.
Barbara wrote
A
Good Farmer which appears in the November 3, 2003 issue of
The Nation. (Unfortunately the
essay is available online to print subscribers only.)
Here is an excerpt:
I found myself that day in the jaws of an impossible argument, and I find I
am there still. In my professional life I've learned that as long as I write
novels and nonfiction books about strictly human conventions and constructions,
I'm taken seriously. But when my writing strays into that muddy territory where
humans are forced to own up to our dependency on the land, I'm apt to be
declared quaintly irrelevant by the small, acutely urban clique that decides in
this country what will be called worthy literature. (That clique does not,
fortunately, hold much sway over what people actually read.) I understand their
purview, I think. I realize I'm beholden to people working in urban centers for
many things I love: They publish books, invent theater, produce films and music.
But if I had not been raised such a polite Southern girl, I'd offer these
critics a blunt proposition: I'll go a week without attending a movie or
concert, you go a week without eating food, and at the end of it we'll sit down
together and renegotiate "quaintly irrelevant."
This is a conversation that needs to happen. Increasingly I feel sure of it;
I just don't know how to go about it when so many have completely forgotten the
genuine terms of human survival. Many adults, I'm convinced, believe that food
comes from grocery stores. In Wendell Berry's novel Jayber Crow, a farmer
coming to the failing end of his long economic struggle despaired aloud, "I've
wished sometimes that the sons of bitches would starve. And now I'm getting
afraid they actually will."
Like that farmer, I am frustrated with the imposed acrimony between producers
and consumers of food, as if this were a conflict in which one could possibly
choose sides. I'm tired of the presumption of a nation divided between rural and
urban populations whose interests are permanently at odds, whose votes will
always be cast different ways, whose hearts and minds share no common ground.
This is as wrong as blight, a useless way of thinking, similar to the propaganda
warning us that any environmentalist program will necessarily be antihuman.
Recently a national magazine asked me to write a commentary on the great divide
between "the red and the blue"--imagery taken from election-night coverage that
colored a map according to the party each state elected, suggesting a clear
political difference between the rural heartland and urban coasts. Sorry, I
replied to the magazine editors, but I'm the wrong person to ask: I live in red,
tend to think blue and mostly vote green. If you're looking for
oversimplification, skip the likes of me.
Better yet, skip the whole idea. Recall that in many of those red states,
just a razor's edge under half the voters likely pulled the blue lever, and vice
versa--not to mention the greater numbers everywhere who didn't even show up at
the polls, so far did they feel from affectionate toward any of the available
options. Recall that farmers and hunters, historically, are more active
environmentalists than many progressive, city-dwelling vegetarians. (And
conversely, that some of the strongest land-conservation movements on the planet
were born in the midst of cities.) Recall that we all have the same requirements
for oxygen and drinking water, and that we all like them clean but relentlessly
pollute them. Recall that whatever lofty things you might accomplish today, you
will do them only because you first ate something that grew out of dirt.
We don't much care to think of ourselves that way--as creatures whose
cleanest aspirations depend ultimately on the health of our dirt. But our
survival as a species depends on our coming to grips with that, along with some
other corollary notions, and when I entered a comfortable midlife I began to see
that my kids would get to do the same someday, or not, depending on how well our
species could start owning up to its habitat and its food chain. As we faced one
environmental crisis after another, did our species seem to be making this
connection? As we say back home, Not so's you'd notice.
October 17, 2003
Molly
Ivins
For her books,
Shrub : The Short but Happy Political Life of George W. Bush and
Bushwacked: Life in George W. Bush's America.
You can read an
excerpt
from
Bushwacked at Salon. (Get the free day-pass)
For her
columns that appear several times a week, all over the country and the
internet.
Thank you, Molly, for being someone who doesn't mince her words
and who calls a spade a spade. I only wish the rest of the country
listened to you sooner.
October 10, 2003
Margaret Cho
For her blog post from
October 9, 2003 about
Ann Coulter:
People get so pissed off at Ann Coulter. I never really saw
her before, but when her name is mentioned in my circles, muthafuckas go off.
I realized I needed to do some research on her. Generally, I will read
everything and agree somewhat with everyone, even extreme or stupid points of
view, because anyone that can get it together to write a book is kind of cool.
The worse the author is, the more I enjoy it. Schadenfreude never fails to
capture me in a web of desire. I got that "You got me at 'Hello'." - feeling
when reading the forward for SLANDER, written by high ass junkie pill popper
Rush Limbaugh. I cannot believe that he was able to put sentences together
while on all those fucking drugs, which explains his chaotic and disturbing
point of view and therefore makes him an incredible idiot savant.
I dove into Ann's writing, which was a cross between bizarre accusations about
liberal politicians and psycho babble hyperbolic lies that make no sense. The
conservative men love her, because she is a loyal slave to the status quo. She
is Cunta Kinte. As well as betraying her gender, as a notoriously
anti-feminist woman hater, she is also racist, homophobic, without compassion,
inhumane, arrogant, dishonest, contradictory, not funny, has an arguing
technique that compares closely to "I know you are, but what am I?", wears red
leather miniskirts and is just plain fucking wrong. I cannot even quote her
because everything she says is too awful for me to write. All this and she
isn't even hot. If you are going to be wrong, at least be hot.
Read the rest
of the post, it is hilarious!
October 3, 2003
Rana
of
Notes from an
Eclectic Mind
When my mind becomes overwhelmed by current events, politics and
more, there is nothing I
love more than reading some great stories. Notes from an Eclectic Mind is
one of my favorite blogs. Rana's stories are delightful. She is such
a wonderful writer. I look forward to reading her stories every day.
I laugh, I cry, I smile, I learn.
And the
Topic Was Fan Fiction is one of my most favorite stories. I laughed so
hard that I had tears rolling down my cheeks!
Thank you, Rana, for sharing your gift
with us all.
September 26, 2003
Howard Zinn
For his article,
An Occupied Country,
in The Progressive:
I wake up thinking this country is in the grip of a President
who was not elected, who has surrounded himself with thugs in suits who care
nothing about human life abroad or here, who care nothing about freedom abroad
or here, who care nothing about what happens to the earth, the water, the air.
And I wonder what kind of world our children and grandchildren will inherit.
More Americans are beginning to feel, like the soldiers in Iraq, that something
is terribly wrong, that this is not what we want our country to be.
More and more every day, the lies are being exposed. And then there is the
largest lie: that everything the United States does is to be pardoned because we
are engaged in a "war on terrorism." This ignores the fact that war is itself
terrorism, that the barging into people's homes and taking away family members
and subjecting them to torture, that is terrorism, that invading and bombing
other countries does not give us more security but less security.
and
Human beings do not naturally support violence and terror. They
do so only when they believe their lives or country are at stake. These were not
at stake in the Iraq War. Bush lied to the American people about Saddam and his
weapons. And when people learn the truth--as happened in the course of the
Vietnam War--they will turn against the government. We who are for peace have
the support of the rest of the world. The United States cannot indefinitely
ignore the ten million people who protested around the world on February 15. The
power of government--whatever weapons it possesses, whatever money it has at its
disposal--is fragile. When it loses its legitimacy in the eyes of its people,
its days are numbered.
We need to engage in whatever nonviolent actions appeal to us. There is no act
too small, no act too bold. The history of social change is the history of
millions of actions, small and large, coming together at critical points to
create a power that governments cannot suppress. We find ourselves today at one
of those critical points.
Read
the whole article...
September 19, 2003
Paul Krugman
From the introduction to
The
Great Unraveling:
A growing number of people are starting to realize just how
serious the situation is. Maybe Andy Rooney of CBS's 60 Minutes put it best:
"The only real good news will be when this terrible time in American history is
over."
What can bring that real good news closer?
To hope for a turnaround, you have to believe that most
Americans don't really support the right's agenda -- that the country as a whole
is more generous, more tolerant, and less militaristic than the people now
running it. And I think that's true -- but for the right's success in obscuring
its aims, and wrapping itself in the flag, I believe that most Americans would
strongly oppose the direction this country is going.
I have a vision -- maybe just a hope -- of a great revulsion: a
moment in which the American people look at what is happening, realize how their
good will and patriotism have been abused, and put a stop to this drive to destroy
much of what is best in our country. How and when this moment will come, I don't
know. But one thing is clear: it cannot happen unless we all make an effort to
see and report the truth about what is happening.
Visit the unofficial
Krugman site for a listing of his
columns.
Read an interview on
CalPundit.
Read The
Tax-Cut Con from the New York Times magazine.
September 12, 2003
Ms.
D
of
Degrees of Divinity
For her post
Remembering,
Part One,
Part Two,
Part
Three, Part
Four,
and
Finding My Way
I keep my hardhat and respirator as reminders. Reminders of the
fact that life is fragile. I was living in CT when the terrorists flew their
hijacked planes into the WTC and Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001, working as the
associate minister at a large church.
Read the
rest of part one
Read
part two
Read part three
Read part four
Read
Finding My Way
Thank you for telling your story. Thank you for helping
those who needed it most as they struggled to help others.
You are an inspiration!
September 5, 2003
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
I had the pleasure of listening to him speak Wednesday evening.
Here are some of my notes:
• The theft of the commons (clean air, water, national parks,
federal lands) is occurring right now, thanks to the Bush administration.
• The environment is the infrastructure of our communities.
• Bush is the most anti-environmental president in our history. If the
Bush administration succeeds in passing over a hundred anti-environmental laws
and overturning existing legislation, we will have virtually NO environmental
protection.
• The Bush administration claims that they must choose between economic
prosperity and environmental protection. This is a FALSE choice.
• The Bush administration is promoting a few years of “pollution-based
prosperity” – the degradation of the environment is deficit spending.
Environmental injury matures into economic catastrophe.
• All that Bush cares about is the cost of compliance to his campaign
contributors.
• It is impossible to achieve sustained environmental protection in any type of
government except a democracy. There is a distinct correlation between the level
of tyranny in a country and the amount of environmental destruction.
• The Bush administration says that they want to do away with federal
legislation to return control to the states. This DOES NOT WORK. Local control
becomes corporate control.
• The federal environmental laws democratize our country.
• Polluters make themselves rich by making everyone else poor. They escape the
discipline of the free market by using or buying political clout. Capitalism for
the poor is subsidizing socialism for the rich. Large corporations are
eliminating huge sectors of the free market.
• When the free market is violated, the people who bear the disproportionate
burden of environmental injury are the poor.
• RFK Jr. describes himself as a “free market-eer” – he wants to protect the
free market by forcing corporations to internalize ALL of their costs, including
the cost to clean up the environment they destroy.
• We don’t inherit this planet from our ancestors, we borrow it from our
children.
~
And some quotes from an
interview from the
Natural Resources Defense Council:
NRDC:
And this vision and those themes continue to inform American culture today?
RFK Jr:
Of course they do. They are a very strong part of our culture although,
as I said before, that aspect of our soul is in a constant struggle with the
more evident part of our culture that says, "Let's just liquidate the assets
for cash." Without the underlying spiritual elements, those individuals say
that America isn't really a nation, it's not a community -- it's just real
estate. That's the attitude that holds that we're just a bunch of strangers
who have gathered from across the planet to serve our individual
self-interests and to make ourselves rich and to increase the size of our
piles and to move on.
NRDC:
Has that attitude been more evident over the past couple of years in Congress?
RFK Jr:
Yes. I would point to the Congressional elections of 1994 as the
manifestation of a kind of dark side of American history and the American
character. Every so often it emerges as the dominant aspect of our nation, but
then there is always the other side -- the light-filled aspect of the American
character -- that has appeared throughout our history. Think of World War II,
or the many other times when the United States took a leadership role in the
world as a humanitarian nation, as a defender of democracy, and the leader of
those kinds of positive values that emerge from the spiritual aspect of our
national character.
NRDC:
You almost make it sound like a battle between the forces of light and
darkness.
RFK Jr:
In a way, it is. Every group of people, like every politician and every
nation and every individual, has a darker side and a lighter side. The easiest
thing for a political leader to do is to appeal to our greed and our
self-interest, to our xenophobia and bigotry and hatred.
But, again, we also have political leaders, and
you can names dozens of them, who have been able to appeal to our other side,
and to appeal to that part of the American character that says: "No! We're not
here to just get rich. We are here to create communities, to create an example
of democracy and of what humanity can accomplish if we maintain our spiritual
horizons."
NRDC:
So this battle between the forces of light and darkness, so to speak, has to
be won in each household, in each family, within each person?
RFK Jr:
Exactly. We start with ourselves, we see to our backyard, we proceed
then to our communities, and ultimately to large ecosystems and river valleys.
The Hudson Valley, in many ways, has been a battle zone between those two
kinds of visions of America. But when you look around, you see examples of
many other communities that have made a conscious decision to preserve their
environment for future generations.
NRDC:
So, ultimately, are you hopeful?
RFK Jr:
I have to be. You see, the planet is being destroyed ecosystem by
ecosystem, and river valley by river valley, and it's going to have to be
saved in the same way -- one river at a time, one town at a time, one city at
a time. And if environmentalists can help spread that spiritual fire, I am
convinced that we can overcome the drive for short-term gains. We can overcome
the drive that is tearing apart our ecosystems and in its place fulfill the
vision of community and nature that still resides within the hearts of
Americans and forms the best and the finest in the American character.
August 29, 2003
My friend Joel
Pax Nortona
and
Acts of Conscience
for his posts
"A Peace from
Hell" and
"Return to
the Center"
(plus countless others...)
Thank you, Joel, for continuing to speak out with such
honesty!
~
From
"A Peace from
Hell":
Progressives know that this war will not go away, that the troops will not
wake up with happy dreams about warm welcomes of the Iraqi people. As an army
of occupation they face more violence, more hatred than the soldiers who
occupied Nazi Germany after the First World War. It is right to press for
families to be heard, to state their view that their children, their spouses,
their parents will not no longer be used as the private army of Halliburton,
Bechtel, and the other American corporations that have profited so richly from
this invasion. The peace from hell can only end with the withdrawl of U.S.
forces and U.S. capital from Iraq. Let the United Nations keep the peace.
Bring our troops home.
Read the rest...
~
From
"Return to
the Center":
I am about as socialist and as libertarian as you can get. But there's
value in governing the country around its true center, around compromise, give
and take, continual reevaluation of our policies. What has happened is that a
small clique of ultra-right wing extremists are struggling to develop a new
center -- around the person of George W. Bush, who any intelligent American
should reject as a uniting point due to his incompetence, his avarice, his
influence peddling, his lying, and that fact that he stands well to the right
of the center.
Rather than make conservatives into leftists, I think our goal should be to
bring them to the center and work with us. (Chief among my political values is
representation of our diversity in our decision-making and intelligent,
workable compromise.)
Read the
rest...
August 22, 2003
My dear friend Tracy
for her post titled
"Choosing
Lesbianism"
Another blogger named Zelda tried to use this post as an
attempt to rationalize Zelda's small-minded rant against same sex marriage.
I decided it was time to re-claim Tracy's words for what they were meant to be
-- a declaration of her bravery in choosing to change her life to one that she
truly wants instead of being stuck.
We should all have the courage to pursue the lives we really
want to live.
Tracy, you are an inspiration!
From her
entry:
Now please tell me why anyone would choose to put themself in a position
where they can be discriminated against, where they can have people tell them
on a regular basis that they are going to hell, where so much hatred is
directed at them? It seems kind of silly to want to choose something like
that, doesn't it? I never chose it for myself. I did however choose to
acknowledge my orientation. I chose to not have to pretend to be someone I'm
not. I chose to stop lying to myself and everyone around me. It hasn't been an
easy decision, but in the end I think it will be worth it. As Amy Ray sings,
"Got to learn to respect what we don’t understand."
Read the rest...
August 15, 2003
One of my favorite bloggers
for
"We'll
Bring the Weapons..."
Thank you for sharing something not covered in the mainstream
media
and for not being afraid to ask very difficult questions.
From her
entry:
"We'll bring the weapons..." I wonder if Bush meant what he
said, or is this another example of Bush not meaning what he says, and not
saying what he means.
And I wonder if it has anything to do with what happened to
Josh
Neusche, what caused his death. Josh is one of two U.S. soldiers reported
dead from what is being called a mysterious illness, pneumonia.
Read the rest...
August 8, 2003
Aaron McGruder appeared on a recent episode of
Real Time with Bill Maher. He
was part of a guest panel that included D.L. Hughley and Bay Buchanan. It
was a great episode. I get The
Boondocks delivered to my email box every day, since my local newspaper is
too conservative to carry the comic strip.
From an
article in
The Nation:
On Thanksgiving Day 2001, with the United States in the midst of what
polls identify as one of the most popular wars in history and with
President Bush's approval ratings hovering around 90 percent, more than 20
million American households opened their daily newspapers to see a little
black kid named Huey Freeman leading the pre-turkey prayer.
"Ahem," began the unsmiling youth. "In this time of war against Osama
bin Laden and the oppressive Taliban regime, we are thankful that OUR
leader isn't the spoiled son of a powerful politician from a wealthy oil
family who is supported by religious fundamentalists, operates through
clandestine organizations, has no respect for the democratic electoral
process, bombs innocents, and uses war to deny people their civil
liberties. Amen."
and
Indeed, McGruder wonders why so few successful artists speak out about
race, class, war and Bush's court-ordered presidency. "I understand that
in a capitalist society, anger at the system is a luxury. But some people
are on top of the system. Why don't they speak out?" he asks. "The only
time I really get upset is when I see someone like Oprah [Winfrey], who
has the money, who has the power, and I think, 'What is holding you back
from changing the world, from changing the world in a drastic way?'" Adds
McGruder, who has frequently used The Boondocks to criticize
African-American celebrities who take the cautious route, "Some of these
people clearly decided, at some point, not to take any risks. I can't do
that." So Huey Freeman refuses to shut up. "I'm going to stay cynical,
resist this bandwagon war," the cartoon character told his pal Caesar in a
recent strip. "Sure, my kind may be obsolete. But so what?"
Actually, McGruder says, he doesn't believe Huey's thinking--or his
own--to be obsolete, or even all that radical. "I really think that what I
am doing with The Boondocks is common sense. It's just that when no
one in a position to be heard is speaking out, common sense seems
radical," he says, sounding distinctly like Huey as he adds, "How's that
for irony: We live in a time when common-sense statements seem radical."
Read the whole
article...
July 25, 2003
From an
article written by Scott Gold:
You have to drive up the gullet of Texas on the Brazos Trail,
past road-kill armadillos and the Worm Lady's bait shop, through mosquitoes so
thick the thwacks on your windshield sound like a summer storm. Only then do you
pass a sign declaring this town a most unlikely tourist trap: "Home of President
George W. Bush."
Residents here knew life would change when Bush bought his ranch four years ago.
They were wary of the Secret Service, but it turns out they're nice as can be.
They figured visitors would show up, so they opened gift shops where you can buy
Old Glory in all sizes and Barbara Bush bobblehead dolls.
But they didn't think the hippies would come.
This spring, a ponytailed, woolly-sock-wearing Muslim-Quaker peace activist —
not a local, in other words — took out an $800-a-month mortgage on a $54,000
colonial home. The activist, Johnny Wolf, and a group of liberal supporters who
oppose Bush's foreign policy have dubbed it the "Crawford Peace House."
They hope to offer visitors a "center for spiritual growth and intellectual
understanding," an interfaith house of worship and a place where journalists can
go to find a viewpoint different than what they say is a "cult of war" at the
ranch.
"One of the neighbors told me, 'Well, you're just a bunch of old hippies.' Well
... yeah," Wolf said. "And for $800 a month, we get to challenge the leader of a
superpower. It's great. Every fourth or fifth car that passes waves at us. And
some people tell us we're No. 1 — they flip us off."
Read the rest of the article...
July 18, 2003
His writing is captivating. He speaks his mind. He
has a heart and a soul. His photographs show me the other side. His
words echo in my thoughts.
Some excerpts from his blog:
June 29, 2003: <snip> more and more people
are coming to my attention who feel that to not support this war is to be
unpatriotic...to not support the war means that you do not support the troops...i
highly disagree..."supporting the troops" could equal "bring them
home"...believe me...we won't be offended...we hate it here...but as long as the
government says there is a job to do...we will stay...until completion...thats
what we do...
and to be unpatriotic because you do not wish to speak up against a thing that
you think is inherently wrong!!!
i again disagree...the glory of america...of being patriotic lies in the people
of america coming forth and taking a stand in something they strongly believe
in...anything at all...no matter it's premise...no matter it's reward...because
that is america...
those who sit and barely pay attention to the decisions that are made for them
in the capital are the ones who are not patriotic...loving your country enough
that it makes you sad and distressed when you feel it is screwing up makes you
patriotic...doing your duty in war no matter your beliefs makes you
patriotic...and knowing deep down that for all of your countries many colossal
faults it is still one of the best nations in the world makes you patriotic as
well(trust me...i've seen a lot of the others) ...
america is my home...it always will be...but that doesn't mean i can't get mad
at it...
~
July 1, 2003: <snip> i've been reading a book by
noam chomsky...it's opened
my eyes...the american massive is so quick to forget these horrible things that
the rest of the world could never let slip from their memories...why is this...
on my left is a building...it's shaped like the letter U...not a lying down
U...but a perfectly normal...standing on its end U...a bomb went through the
roof...and the structure is warped...forever...the glass in every building in a
1/2 mile around this target is broken and gone...the green house to my left...is
just a green house frame...the debris and shockwave must have killed
everyone...the size of that explosion would be unavoidable...i think about an
article i read...the author said that "might does not make right"...we used a
lot of might here...i can see it...but hardly a ripple in the water of what we
are capable of using...
i think we forget so quickly because our administrations only last a max of 8
years...and the mistakes of the former are never the mistakes of the young
elected...they get to make all new ones...jon stewart said america's foreign
policy is simple..."we'll do what we want, and you'll do what we want"...it's
funny cause it's true...
~
July 11, 2003: <snip> i, on the other hand, believe
that we are entitled to our (americans) right of free speech...as long as we
(the military) do not step out of the realm of the military...i feel that the
members of the military do not make their voices heard enough...we are the
silent fighters...because the majority of us do not pay attention to the
decisions that are made for us in the capital...
i actually have been performing an 'experiment'...i've been asking random
soldiers who the vice president of the united states is...a very simple
question...but i found a surprising answer...the majority of those i asked did
not know the answer nor do they care...this is bad...our lives are at
stake...our country as well...and we do not even pay attention...we have a
voice...but we do not choose to use it...
~
July 11, 2003
of insignifica.org
For his "I am an American" blog entry:
My name is Michael Doss, and I am an American.
I didn't do anything to deserve this title and position; I don't believe
in reincarnation, or in a god that would put me here for a purpose. I was born
to American parents, in America, and therefore I am what I am.
As we celebrate the symbolic day of independence, I'm reminded how lucky
I am to have the rights I do, and I realize the responsibilities that go along
with being an American in 2003.
Read the
rest...
~
Thanks to Donna for nominating Michael!
June 27, 2003
Al Franken
for taking on Bill O'Reilly at the
BookExpo.
Watch the whole thing
-- it's worth it!
(Scroll down to the "Book and Author Luncheon")
~
From an article
on AlterNet:
Alternet: But if you have that mechanism and infrastructure, like the
right-wing media, you're able to keep a story alive and keep it circulating. You
almost brand or market that news story, if you will, for the course of a week or
longer.
FRANKEN: The first part of my new book is about the media, and then it gets
more into the Bush administration. But, of course, they're married – this
right-wing media and the Bush administration. To make the argument that the
media has a left- or right-wing, or a liberal or a conservative bias, is like
asking if the problem with Al-Qaeda is do they use too much oil in their hummus.
And sometimes they do use too much oil, and sometimes they don't use enough. But
the real problem with Al-Qaeda is they want to kill us. And the real problem
with the press is all the other biases that they have. Those include: get the
story fast; scandal; negativity; sexiness – you know, ratings will be up if we
go to war. It's an establishment bias – a bias for the "new," which sounds
contradictory to the establishment bias, but I think it helped Bush and hurt
Gore in 2000. And so they're all these biases in all the media.
But in the right-wing media, they do have a right-wing bias. And they also
have an agenda. So their agenda is: We're an adjunct of the Republican Party,
and we're going push that agenda every day, and, as you say, brand these stories
that help further the right-wing cause.
May 30, 2003
Jonathan Schell
From an article
on AlterNet:
Alternet: You must be alarmed at the way the Bush Administration is
using military force to get its way in the world. If they continue down this
path, what will happen? And what are our alternatives?
Schell: Well again, the principal theme of this book, which I was
thinking about before there ever was a Bush Administration, is that in the long
run it is not military power but political power, that triumphs. That's the
lesson of people's war, that's the lesson of Solidarity in Poland, that's the
lesson of Gandhi in India. In other words, if you actually want to run other
countries, you have to do it on the ground. You can't pick up the garbage from
35,000 feet. A B-52 bomber cannot put the bandages on somebody's wound in a
hospital. As somebody said to Napoleon, you can't mine coal with bayonets. So,
even as the U.S. is triumphing militarily, it's losing politically –
spectacularly!
Just with this one absurd war in which we can't even find the weapons of mass
destruction that were supposed to justify it, we seriously alienated the planet.
The human species did not like what we did. You can measure this, you can look
at opinion polls; this is not an historical detail, this is a major political
fact with major political consequences for the future and for the present too.
So I think that this really is a bid for a kind of military domination over the
earth, I think it's bound to fail, which doesn't mean that we don't have to take
it seriously. On the contrary, it can bring unimaginable destruction and mayhem,
depending on how far it goes, including the use of nuclear weapons, either
against the United States or by the United States or both. So it's an urgent
matter to stop it sooner rather than later.
May 23, 2003
Janeane
Garofolo
From an interview
with The Nation:
Garofalo: There's been such an assault on democracy here, and the
mainstream media is complicit in it. We are living in neo-McCarthy,
post-democratic times. Democracy is being criminalized. Democracy is being
ignored.
Millions of people around the world were marching for peace before the war
actually happened. This was historically unprecedented. And it has been
basically ignored and marginalized by the mainstream media. The President has
openly said that he doesn't make policy by focus group. First of all, eight
million people are not a focus group. And he sure does make policy by focus
group, and it's called the Christian right.I never imagined this would be my
life.
I never imagined that I would never care about dumb things anymore. I never
imagined I'd be a person who could transcend that kind of nonsense. But beyond
that, I never imagined I would be penalized for speaking out in favor of social
justice. I never thought that anyone who spoke out for peace, and diplomacy, and
social justice would be pilloried.
I'm frequently depressed, just have a general malaise. And I don't mean a
malaise of indifference, I mean a malaise of sadness and fear. I've always been
alarmed by some of the things that the mainstream media does and by what the
government does, no matter who's in office, but the broken heart is new.
May 16, 2003
Jon Stewart
and
The Daily Show
From Daily
Show Does Bush at The Nation:
The TV anchor was taken aback. Unlike the other network news anchors or
the New York Times, he considered the disclosure that the Bush
Administration had granted a major contract to Halliburton for postwar
construction of oil wells in Iraq to be a scandalous lead story. He noted
that hearing the news "does make me feel like the government just took a
[bleep] on my chest." He then turned to his "senior" senior correspondent,
Stephen Colbert, and asked what he made of the Halliburton deal. "Keeping in
mind that Halliburton was a major contributor to the Republican campaign and
that Vice President Cheney is its former CEO, this move by the government is
extremely..." and then Colbert paused. "Unpleasant?" offered the anchor,
"nauseating?" Colbert said that nothing quite captured it; what came closest
was a German word he translated to mean "to throw one's hands up in mute
horror and in this state of paralyzing dread to realize that those you need
to trust most have instead confirmed your darkest fears." But Colbert said
even that "seems a little namby-pamby in this context."
Read the
rest of the article...
May 9, 2003
Bruce Springsteen
This was posted at his
website last week:
The Dixie Chicks have taken a big hit lately for
exercising their basic right to express themselves. To me, they're terrific
American artists expressing American values by using their American right to
free speech. For them to be banished wholesale from radio stations, and even
entire radio networks, for speaking out is un-American.
The pressure coming from the government and big
business to enforce conformity of thought concerning the war and politics
goes against everything that this country is about - namely freedom. Right
now, we are supposedly fighting to create freedom in Iraq, at the same time
that some are trying to intimidate and punish people for using that same
freedom here at home.
I don't know what happens next, but I do want to add my
voice to those who think that the Dixie Chicks are getting a raw deal, and
an un-American one to boot. I send them my support.
Bruce Springsteen
April 25, 2003
Tim Robbins
For his
speech given to the National Press Club on
April 15, 2003
~
A message is being sent through the White House and its
allies in talk radio and Clear Channel and Cooperstown. If you oppose this
administration, there can and will be ramifications.
Every day, the air waves are filled with warnings, veiled
and unveiled threats, spewed invective and hatred directed at any voice of
dissent. And the public, like so many relatives and friends that I saw this
weekend, sit in mute opposition and fear.
~
Our ability to disagree, and our inherent right to question
our leaders and criticize their actions define who we are. To allow those rights
to be taken away out of fear, to punish people for their beliefs, to limit
access in the news media to differing opinions is to acknowledge our democracy's
defeat.
These are challenging times. There is a wave of hate that
seeks to divide us -- right and left, pro-war and anti-war. In the name of my
11-year-old nephew, and all the other unreported victims of this hostile and
unproductive environment of fear, let us try to find our common ground as a
nation. Let us celebrate this grand and glorious experiment that has survived
for 227 years. To do so we must honor and fight vigilantly for the things that
unite us -- like freedom, the First Amendment and, yes, baseball.
April 18, 2003
Timothy Conway, PhD
~
From an
interview with
The Sun:
In your upcoming book, Healing Our World, you write, “Our Founding
Fathers would be shocked to see how their beautiful adventure in democracy
has been turned into a plutocratic <i>demon</i>cracy.”
Conway: We’ve been bamboozled by
sloganeering politicians who use demonizing anecdotes about welfare queens
to indict single mothers while unfairly rewarding their favorite welfare
kings: the big corporate honchos who lavishly fund their servile
politicians’ campaigns in return for huge federal subsidies and tax breaks.
Hundreds of billions of dollars in corporate welfare are granted annually to
the ruinous oil, coal, nuclear, mining, and timber industries, and the
corrupt agribusiness, telecommunications, and financial sectors.
So, yes, we have a democracy ruled by demons – greedy, callous, and
conniving. Most of the politicians playing these sordid little games don’t
even seem to have a conscience anymore. There are still about a hundred
people in Congress who are trying to promote the common good. Unfortunately
they are heavily outnumbered by these other politicians who are pretty much
bought and paid for by special-interest groups and corporate donors.
April 11, 2003
Angelica Amaya
of West Virginia, USA
for her
Individual Act of Conscience
~
One Woman Enrages War Rally with Her Heartfelt Message: 'I Love My Country
But...'
by Roy MacGregor
April 4, 2003
Dennis
Kucinich
The Peace Candidate
April 1, 2003:
Congressman Dennis J. Kucinich (D-OH), who leads opposition to the War in Iraq
within the House, today, issued the following statement on the House floor:
Stop the war now. As Baghdad will be encircled, this is the time to get the
UN back in to inspect Baghdad and the rest of Iraq for biological and chemical
weapons. Our troops should not have to be the ones who will find out, in
combat, whether Iraq has such weapons. Why put our troops at greater risk? We
could get the United Nations inspectors back in.
Stop the war now. Before we send our troops into house-to-house combat in
Baghdad, a city of five million people. Before we ask our troops to take up
the burden of shooting innocent civilians in the fog of war.
Stop the war now. This war has been advanced on lie upon lie. Iraq was not
responsible for 9/11. Iraq was not responsible for any role al-Qaeda may have
had in 9/11. Iraq was not responsible for the anthrax attacks on this country.
Iraq did not tried to acquire nuclear weapons technology from Niger. This war
is built on falsehood.
Stop the war now. We are not defending America in Iraq. Iraq did not attack
this nation. Iraq has no ability to attack this nation. Each innocent civilian
casualty represents a threat to America for years to come and will end up
making our nation less safe. The seventy-five billion dollar supplemental
needs to be challenged because each dime we spend on this war makes America
less safe. Only international cooperation will help us meet the challenge of
terrorism. After 9/11 all Americans remember we had the support and the
sympathy of the world. Every nation was ready to be of assistance to the
United States in meeting the challenge of terrorism. And yet, with this war,
we have squandered the sympathy of the world. We have brought upon this nation
the anger of the world. We need the cooperation of the world, to find the
terrorists before they come to our shores.
Stop this war now. Seventy-five billion dollars more for war. Three-quarters
of a trillion dollars for tax cuts, but no money for veterans ' benefits.
Money for war. No money for health care in America, but money for war. No
money for social security, but money for war. We have money to blow up bridges
over the Tigris and the Euphrates, but no money to build bridges in our own
cities. We have money to ruin the health of the Iraqi children, but no money
to repair the health of our own children and our educational programs.
Stop this war now. It is wrong. It is illegal. It is unjust and it will come
to no good for this country.
Stop this war now. Show our wisdom and our humanity, to be able to stop it, to
bring back the United Nations into the process. Rescue this moment. Rescue
this nation from a war that is wrong, that is unjust, that is immoral.
Stop this war now.
March 28, 2003
Starhawk
From an interview with
The Sun:
What is the biggest challenge facing the global justice
movement right now?
Starhawk: We are confronting the largest
conglomeration of military and economic power in the planet, and we’re doing it
without huge financial resources or access to media or political power of our
own. Many people in the movement in North America are saying we need to root our
activism in local issues, rather than just contesting big summits. They have a
point, although big summits are the only places where you can confront the
system as a whole.
Right now the people who tend to get involved are either young or old; either
they don’t have families yet, or their children are grown, like mine. We need to
reach out to that mass of people who are working full-time jobs and trying to
get the kids to school and maybe even clean the house from time to time. We need
to find ways for them to participate and make their voices heard. Not everyone
has the time to organize a campaign, but maybe they can make a phone call, or
send and e-mail, or attend a nearby demonstration.
We are at a crucial moment in this country. We’ve essentially had a coup; we
have a man in the White House who was not elected and who is pushing us into
policies that the majority of the people don’t support. Around eight hundred
people of Middle Eastern descent were arrested after September 11 and held
without access to lawyers or family. Some of them may still be in jail. We’ve
seen new laws that threaten our civil rights and an Office of Homeland Security
that threatens our privacy and liberty. Now George W. Bush is attempting to
unleash an offensive war against Iraq that is supported neither by the majority
in this country nor by the international community. The question is, are we
going to allow him to do that?
I don’t think right now we have the luxury of keeping silent and focusing on our
personal lives. If we want to live in a democratic country, this is the moment
to stand up and demand our country back, because we may not have the option of
doing so later.
March 21, 2003
September Eleventh Families For Peaceful Tomorrows
Peaceful Tomorrows is an advocacy organization founded
by family members of September Eleventh victims. Its mission is to seek
effective nonviolent responses to terrorism, and identify a commonality with
all people similarly affected by violence throughout the world. By
conscientiously exploring peaceful options in our search for justice, we
choose to spare additional innocent families the suffering that we have
already experienced—as well as to break the endless cycle of violence and
retaliation engendered by war.
~
September 11th Families for Peaceful Tomorrows condemns unconditionally the
illegal, immoral, and unjustified US-led military action in Iraq. As family
members of September 11th victims, we know how it feels to experience "shock and
awe," and we do not want other innocent families to suffer the trauma and grief
that we have endured. While we also condemn the brutality of Saddam Hussein's
regime, it does not justify the brutality, death and destruction being visited
upon Iraq and its citizens by our own government.
March 14, 2003
Veterans for Common Sense
Veterans for Common Sense
seeks to inject the element of Common Sense into debates over war and national
security. In an age when the majority of public servants have never served in
uniform, the perspective of war veterans must play a key role in the public
debate over national security issues in order to preserve the liberty veterans
have fought and died preserving.
March 7, 2003
Bill Moyers
for his essay
Patriotism and the
American Flag
Some excerpts:
The [American] flag's been hijacked and turned into a logo —
the trademark of a monopoly on patriotism.
The flag belongs to the country, not to the government.
And it reminds me that it's not un-American to think that war
— except in self-defense — is a failure of moral imagination, political nerve,
and diplomacy.
Come to think of it, standing up to your government can mean
standing up for your country.
~ ~ ~
Here is a sign that I created. Feel free to use it pass
it around. Use it on your website.
Remind everyone.
February 27, 2003
Fred Rogers
1928 - 2003
Mister Rogers Neighborhood first aired on PBS in 1968. I was
one year old. I grew up with Mr. Rogers.
His kindness, gentleness and love affect me even now, as I mother my own children.
I give Mr. Rogers the Shameless Agitator Award this week
because he showed us time and time again that
babies and children are PEOPLE and deserve our love and respect.
His message is simple, and one that we should cherish:
Love ourselves, love each other.
There’s only one person in the whole world like you.
Love.
February 21, 2003
Code
Pink
We call on women around the world to rise up and oppose the war in Iraq. We call
on mothers, grandmothers, sisters and daughters, on workers, students, teachers,
healers, artists, writers, singers, poets, and every ordinary outraged woman
willing to be outrageous for peace.
February 14, 2003
Mission: To foster "peace" as the only logical alternative for
human kind. We are world patriots.
February 7, 2003
According to the New York
Times, First Lady Laura Bush decided to
postpone the poetry symposium after she learned that the invited poets
would be submitting anti-war poetry.
~
An Open Letter from Sam Hamill
Dear Friends and Fellow Poets:
When I picked up my mail and saw the letter marked "The White House," I felt
no joy. Rather I was overcome by a kind of nausea as I read the card enclosed:
Laura Bush requests the pleasure of your company
at a reception and White House Symposium
on "Poetry and the American Voice"
on Wednesday, February 12, 2003 at one o'clock
Only the day before I had read a lengthy report on George Bush's proposed
"Shock and Awe" attack on Iraq, calling for saturation bombing that would be
like the firebombing of Dresden or Tokyo, killing countless innocent
civilians. Nor has Bush ruled out the use of nuclear weapons.
I believe the only legitimate response to such a morally bankrupt and
unconscionable idea is to reconstitute a Poets Against the War movement like
the one organized to speak out against the war in Vietnam.
I am asking every poet to speak up for the conscience of our country and lend
his or her name to our petition against this war, and to make February 12 a
day of Poetry Against the War. We will compile an anthology of protest to be
presented to the White House on that afternoon.
Please submit your name and a poem or statement of conscience to the Poets
Against the War Web site.
There is little time to organize and compile. I urge you to pass along this
letter to any poets you know. Please join me in making February 12 a day when
the White House can truly hear the voices of American poets.
-- Sam Hamill, Founding Editor and Co-founder of Copper Canyon Press
January 24, 2003
and
January 31, 2003
My favorite player on the Columbus Blue
Jackets hockey team.
January 17, 2003
~
Read
their Statement about Iraq
Sign the NION Statement
View
the list of signers
January 10, 2003
Kathy Kelly
and
The Iraq Peace Team
which is part of
Voices in the Wilderness
Thank you for standing up for your beliefs.
Kathy Kelly and other members of the Iraq
Peace Team
have been living in Baghdad, Iraq since October 24, 2002.
January 3, 2003
Michael Dobbs
for his article
U.S. Had Key Role In Iraq Buildup
published in the
Washington Post
(free registration may be
required to read the article)
|
