I received this email today and want to share it as we remember the sad day of Martin Luther King's assassination. I also encourage you to rent the HBO documentary about this great woman's life.
Peace,
Alan
--------------------------------
Dear Friends,
Doris "Granny D" Haddock, 98, has been taking her iron pills and eating
her vegetables and now reports that she is running on all eight
cylinders again. She has put off her planned addition of a heart pacemaker
--"maybe when I'm older I'll need it." This week she was in Gettysburg
and delivered the remarks copied below. They will rub some of our gang
the wrong way, but this is a day to remember MLK and people who tell the
truth as they see it, so here goes.
Yours,
Dennis Burke
---------------------------------------------------
Gettysburg remarks by Granny D
Thank you.
It is a great honor to be here again. One should never bring a long
speech to Gettysburg, so I shall be only two or three times as long as Mr.
Lincoln.
I first met some of you eight years ago. We were all so worried about
losing our democracy that we were wiling to walk across the country and
go to jail. You meet the nicest people in the Washington jail, by the
way –that’s where I met Lou and Patricia Hammann.
Eight years ago we could not have imagined what our country was headed
into.
We could not have imagined how many protests, how many marches, how
many letters, phone calls, emails, posters, banners, and campaigns we were
in for. We could not have imagined the amazing people who have come
into our vision, for good and for ill. We could never in our wildest
imaginings have come up with a story about how the US would attack
countries at will based on phony propaganda, how we would become a country that
tortures people, how we would become a country that spits on the grave
of every patriot who lived or died for our freedoms under the Bill of
Rights. Just those eight years ago, we could not have imagined stolen
elections, an eviscerated and cowardly Congress, or eviscerated and
cowardly national news organizations that refused to see and report the
obvious, or editorial pages that refused to call for the obvious. It has
been a remarkable time.
Before the Iraq invasion, you know many of us were on Capitol Hill
trying to talk sense into some people. The people who knew very well that
there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq were the arms
inspectors. They were on Capitol Hill too, trying to talk sense into those
people. Senators did not want to talk to them because the Senators knew
very well what the truth was. They knew that, if we wanted to keep looking
for those weapons, we only needed to put our inspectors back in. The
inspectors were telling everyone that they then had the freedom to go
anywhere and look at anything in Iraq. They only stopped looking because
Mr. Bush called them home so he could have his little war. Those
inspectors wanted to go back and keep looking.
Here’s something you may not know or may have forgotten: Saddam
Hussein, several weeks before our attack, invited our military to come in
and look at anything they wanted to look at. They were invited to come
in, fully armed, and look wherever they wanted. Our administration said
no thank you. The incredible Mr. Richard Perle, who used to live next
door to my late daughter in Washington and who didn’t like my support
van parked on the street when I arrived after my long walk, evidently,
according to the New York Times of November 6, 2003, went to London to
meet on behalf of Mr. Bush with a representative of Iraq who made this
offer. No thanks, was the silent response. How is that not treason
against this nation and all who have died?
Men like John McCain knew all this. Men like John Kerry knew all this.
In fact, most the people in Kerry’s home state knew all this. They
tried to get appointments with him to talk it over. He refused. Some,
desperate for his attention, went to sit in at his office in Boston and
were arrested. Bishops tried to get to him and offered to be arrested.
He would not listen, because he already knew the truth and knew he
would turn away from it in order to have a chance for the presidency. Of
course, he thereby killed his chance for the presidency. Millions of
Americans marched to stop that attack because WE ALL KNEW. We all knew.
We all did. The people who voted to go to war did so--sent young men and
women to die, sent our bombs to fall on innocent families abroad--to
better their chances to run for president. Was there ever a more cynical
and unpatriotic act than that? Do their hands not drip with the blood
of our children and the world’s children? Indeed they do. And do we
believe them when they now say they were fooled by Mr. Bush? That they
had no idea that he would go to war with their vote, when the name of
the bill was in fact the Joint Resolution to Authorize the Use of United
States Armed Forces Against Iraq? What does it say about them if they
were fooled when millions of us were in the streets because we were not
fooled?
I mention all this only to make the point that we have not exactly
turned our country around with all our efforts. The same lobbyists who
were swiveling in their chairs and blowing smoke rings around our
Declaration of Independence are swiveling yet, blowing smoke yet. The same
politicians who were selling out our poor and our middle class for their
rich friends are still on the prowl, still selling us out at every
opportunity. And now, when the great casino called Wall Street is toppling,
corruption will allow our tax dollars to prop it up. The same harm that
was being inflicted on our planet then is even more so today, with
very little time left to save the day and save the night and the winter,
spring, summer and fall.
And yet I see that these people who stood up and who marched and who
were willing to go to jail to move America back into the brighter path
have changed things. It is very hard to turn a great ship around when it
is going fast in the wrong direction. But the ship has turned. I feel
it. I see it in young faces.
Some of us have grown weary of trying to bring America around. Some
have given up for a time. Some no longer see the point of standing on
street corners with signs or making demands of their tone-deaf
Congressmen. It is tiring and discouraging. The arrival of the young people in
this election year are a great boost, but it is tiring work,
nevertheless.
And the biggest fights are still ahead? Indeed, the revolution we
require is yet ahead – a revolution away from coal and oil, away from
corporate domination and corrupt governance, and toward a new way of
living—a way of living as neighbors, friends, people of the earth who are
not the enemies of the earth, of nature. We are on that path now,
though the road is hardly marked with yellow bricks.
Creative leadership is not the essential ingredient. We need leaders
who can inspire the American people and the people of the world to move
in new directions quickly. We need creative leaders who will so inspire
the common man and woman that corrupt Congresses will have no ability
to resist.
Creative leaders, honest election systems, an economy redesigned to
make communities self-sufficient and healthier, and an education system
designed to make all of us and our children the well-informed, bright,
creative, interested and interesting people needed to run a democracy:
these are the visions we must hold in the backs of our eyes now.
We have been running America for many decades with negative
visualizations. You see it even in the movies. Before 9-11, all the big summer
films were about aliens attacking the United States, and hero presidents
jumping in jets to save us. The movies didn’t bring on that
history, but what we think and what we dream have an effect in the world. We
have to make room in the world for what we dream of by actually
dreaming it, by making space for it, by making it imaginable to others through
our own creative leadership in our own families and neighborhoods.
Let’s not be tired. Let’s not be old. Let’s make a new beginning
by getting together with our neighbors more often. How about next week?
Let’s plant some more vegetable gardens. Let’s make some
furniture or art. Let’s fix up some bicycles. Let’s get the whole
neighborhood to go down to visit the local office of our elected people and
get them on board or scare the hell out of them.
This is our democracy if we can keep it. This is a grand planet if we
can save it. It really is up to us. Each person is the hero of the
world, and, in saying that, I do not joke or exaggerate. Every one of you
has the power to do this, to start something big … and necessary …
and beautiful.
Thank you very much.
--------------------------
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
NewEnglandReformSchool.org
http://newenglandreformschool.org
Doris "Granny D" Haddock, 98, has been taking her iron pills and eating
her vegetables and now reports that she is running on all eight
cylinders again. She has put off her planned addition of a heart pacemaker
--"maybe when I'm older I'll need it." This week she was in Gettysburg
and delivered the remarks copied below. They will rub some of our gang
the wrong way, but this is a day to remember MLK and people who tell the
truth as they see it, so here goes.
Yours,
Dennis Burke
---------------------------------------------------
Gettysburg remarks by Granny D
Thank you.
It is a great honor to be here again. One should never bring a long
speech to Gettysburg, so I shall be only two or three times as long as Mr.
Lincoln.
I first met some of you eight years ago. We were all so worried about
losing our democracy that we were wiling to walk across the country and
go to jail. You meet the nicest people in the Washington jail, by the
way –that’s where I met Lou and Patricia Hammann.
Eight years ago we could not have imagined what our country was headed
into.
We could not have imagined how many protests, how many marches, how
many letters, phone calls, emails, posters, banners, and campaigns we were
in for. We could not have imagined the amazing people who have come
into our vision, for good and for ill. We could never in our wildest
imaginings have come up with a story about how the US would attack
countries at will based on phony propaganda, how we would become a country that
tortures people, how we would become a country that spits on the grave
of every patriot who lived or died for our freedoms under the Bill of
Rights. Just those eight years ago, we could not have imagined stolen
elections, an eviscerated and cowardly Congress, or eviscerated and
cowardly national news organizations that refused to see and report the
obvious, or editorial pages that refused to call for the obvious. It has
been a remarkable time.
Before the Iraq invasion, you know many of us were on Capitol Hill
trying to talk sense into some people. The people who knew very well that
there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq were the arms
inspectors. They were on Capitol Hill too, trying to talk sense into those
people. Senators did not want to talk to them because the Senators knew
very well what the truth was. They knew that, if we wanted to keep looking
for those weapons, we only needed to put our inspectors back in. The
inspectors were telling everyone that they then had the freedom to go
anywhere and look at anything in Iraq. They only stopped looking because
Mr. Bush called them home so he could have his little war. Those
inspectors wanted to go back and keep looking.
Here’s something you may not know or may have forgotten: Saddam
Hussein, several weeks before our attack, invited our military to come in
and look at anything they wanted to look at. They were invited to come
in, fully armed, and look wherever they wanted. Our administration said
no thank you. The incredible Mr. Richard Perle, who used to live next
door to my late daughter in Washington and who didn’t like my support
van parked on the street when I arrived after my long walk, evidently,
according to the New York Times of November 6, 2003, went to London to
meet on behalf of Mr. Bush with a representative of Iraq who made this
offer. No thanks, was the silent response. How is that not treason
against this nation and all who have died?
Men like John McCain knew all this. Men like John Kerry knew all this.
In fact, most the people in Kerry’s home state knew all this. They
tried to get appointments with him to talk it over. He refused. Some,
desperate for his attention, went to sit in at his office in Boston and
were arrested. Bishops tried to get to him and offered to be arrested.
He would not listen, because he already knew the truth and knew he
would turn away from it in order to have a chance for the presidency. Of
course, he thereby killed his chance for the presidency. Millions of
Americans marched to stop that attack because WE ALL KNEW. We all knew.
We all did. The people who voted to go to war did so--sent young men and
women to die, sent our bombs to fall on innocent families abroad--to
better their chances to run for president. Was there ever a more cynical
and unpatriotic act than that? Do their hands not drip with the blood
of our children and the world’s children? Indeed they do. And do we
believe them when they now say they were fooled by Mr. Bush? That they
had no idea that he would go to war with their vote, when the name of
the bill was in fact the Joint Resolution to Authorize the Use of United
States Armed Forces Against Iraq? What does it say about them if they
were fooled when millions of us were in the streets because we were not
fooled?
I mention all this only to make the point that we have not exactly
turned our country around with all our efforts. The same lobbyists who
were swiveling in their chairs and blowing smoke rings around our
Declaration of Independence are swiveling yet, blowing smoke yet. The same
politicians who were selling out our poor and our middle class for their
rich friends are still on the prowl, still selling us out at every
opportunity. And now, when the great casino called Wall Street is toppling,
corruption will allow our tax dollars to prop it up. The same harm that
was being inflicted on our planet then is even more so today, with
very little time left to save the day and save the night and the winter,
spring, summer and fall.
And yet I see that these people who stood up and who marched and who
were willing to go to jail to move America back into the brighter path
have changed things. It is very hard to turn a great ship around when it
is going fast in the wrong direction. But the ship has turned. I feel
it. I see it in young faces.
Some of us have grown weary of trying to bring America around. Some
have given up for a time. Some no longer see the point of standing on
street corners with signs or making demands of their tone-deaf
Congressmen. It is tiring and discouraging. The arrival of the young people in
this election year are a great boost, but it is tiring work,
nevertheless.
And the biggest fights are still ahead? Indeed, the revolution we
require is yet ahead – a revolution away from coal and oil, away from
corporate domination and corrupt governance, and toward a new way of
living—a way of living as neighbors, friends, people of the earth who are
not the enemies of the earth, of nature. We are on that path now,
though the road is hardly marked with yellow bricks.
Creative leadership is not the essential ingredient. We need leaders
who can inspire the American people and the people of the world to move
in new directions quickly. We need creative leaders who will so inspire
the common man and woman that corrupt Congresses will have no ability
to resist.
Creative leaders, honest election systems, an economy redesigned to
make communities self-sufficient and healthier, and an education system
designed to make all of us and our children the well-informed, bright,
creative, interested and interesting people needed to run a democracy:
these are the visions we must hold in the backs of our eyes now.
We have been running America for many decades with negative
visualizations. You see it even in the movies. Before 9-11, all the big summer
films were about aliens attacking the United States, and hero presidents
jumping in jets to save us. The movies didn’t bring on that
history, but what we think and what we dream have an effect in the world. We
have to make room in the world for what we dream of by actually
dreaming it, by making space for it, by making it imaginable to others through
our own creative leadership in our own families and neighborhoods.
Let’s not be tired. Let’s not be old. Let’s make a new beginning
by getting together with our neighbors more often. How about next week?
Let’s plant some more vegetable gardens. Let’s make some
furniture or art. Let’s fix up some bicycles. Let’s get the whole
neighborhood to go down to visit the local office of our elected people and
get them on board or scare the hell out of them.
This is our democracy if we can keep it. This is a grand planet if we
can save it. It really is up to us. Each person is the hero of the
world, and, in saying that, I do not joke or exaggerate. Every one of you
has the power to do this, to start something big … and necessary …
and beautiful.
Thank you very much.
--------------------------
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
NewEnglandReformSchool.org
http://newenglandreformschool.org
Cobb Meadow Road
Dublin, NH 03444
USA
Dublin, NH 03444
USA
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