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Politics : DON'T START THE WAR -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Mao II who wrote (19319)	3/11/2003 5:35:56 PM
From: Patricia Trinchero	Respond to of 25898

These are difficult times and getting worse: The Great Political Awakening By Doris "Granny D" Haddock, AlterNet March 10, 2003 Doris "Granny D" Haddock gave the following speech March 8 at the Code Pink International Women's Day March in Washington. We meet in disturbing times but we must not be disturbed. We must be calm and peaceful, for peace cannot come from hearts disturbed and angry. And peace, if it is to come, must come first from our own hearts. Here are some things to give us some calm comfort. France and Germany are together in something at last, and our man in the White House deserves a Nobel Peace Prize at least for that, if for nothing else. The man in the White House is the best political organizer we have ever had. He generated the largest protest demonstrations the earth has ever seen last month. He has us organizing on the peace front, the civil liberties front, the environmental front, the domestic budget front – everywhere, people are waking up after a long sleep. It is a dangerous time, but a great time – a great awakening – and we must give credit to the man whose monumental presumption has made this possible. Will our hearts be on a roller coaster of his design? Will he control our happiness and our anger? We must not give him that. There is only one way off this roller coaster, and that is to focus our lives now on November 2, 2004. That is the mountaintop we must have in the center of our vision. Here is what we must do. We must of course find a good candidate who can represent all of us well, including the moderate middle of American thought, where elections are won. We must not look for the perfect candidate, but for a candidate who believes in the value of life on earth and who will uphold the Bill of Rights, which is now under attack by Bush's wildly unpatriotic Patriot Act and the proposed Patriot Act II, which is a treason. The man in the White House believes that, when our American soldiers start coming home to our communities in coffins, we will rally 'round him – that we will forget what he did to our budget surpluses, our Social Security funds, our Medicare, our pensions and stocks. Merciless rulers from time out of mind have tried that bloody distraction. We are not distracted by the blood of our own sons and daughters, Mr. Bush. Each drop of that precious blood calls our hearts to an election next year and we are an army of people who come against you at the ballot box. Harm our children and watch us. In the 2004 presidential election, we must not split our vote between Greens and Democrats. I know the Greens have party building to do, but, if Mr. Bush wins again, there will be no America for them to build their party in. So they must defer this time and earn our respect and admiration for doing so. Here is what you and I must do. We must arrange to vote by absentee ballot in the general election, so that we can go to the swing states and work to get out the vote on election day. I will do that, will you? If you live in a swing state, of course, you can do your work in your own neighborhood. But if you live in a state that is clearly on one side of the ledger or the other, you must get in your car or a bus or an airplane and go, at your own expense, to an area where you can do some good getting people to the polls. You can also do some good in advance of that to make sure that people are registered to vote. We can be happy in this great adventure, upon which so much depends. We will not let anger and frustration poison our lives. We will get busy and make our plans. We look now to November 2, 2004. Sign up with me as a swing state suffragette on GrannyD.com or Swingstate.org. Let's build an army and be happy about it. When you were a child, did you not want a chance to save the world? Well, be happy. We have been given that job. And a final word, let's stop agreeing to unreasonable police demands when we do our peace marches and rallies. The police have a duty to provide for the public's safety, but that isn't just auto traffic. We are the public and we have a right to peaceably assemble and we don't need permits to do so. They are our streets and our parks. We must stand up for our Bill of Rights and use the peace movement as the crowd to do it. No more cooperation with any police departments who do not take seriously their sworn duty to uphold the law, the highest law of the land being the Constitution and its Bill of Rights. Be happy. Enjoy this great awakening. Sign up at SwingState.org. Enjoy the beauty and love of this great time.