❧❧❧ Whatever you can do or dream, you can BEGIN IT. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it. Goethe ❧❧❧
❧❧❧ You were born whole, not broken. Sandra Hammel ❧❧❧
............................................................... Uploaded by ResolveUgandaDC
AND JUSTICE FOR ALL, especially the powerless, the unheard, the forgotten. Being human needs to be more than being called a human being. Congratulations to ResolveUgandaDCon all the hard work to get our elected officials to do what is right and not what is politically safe.
I received this email message today
Sandra --
After more than a year of inspired lobbying by activists across the nation, last night Congress passed the LRA Disarmament and Northern Uganda Recovery Act with flying colors.
The final vote came in the House after a series of Representatives, at your urging, delivered statements of support that had our team here both tearing up and cheering out loud. Now passed through both chambers of Congress, the bill sits on the President's desk and awaits his signature.
Think for a moment: just a few short years ago, the response from our leaders in Congress to this crisis -- to the abductions of thousands of children and attacks against innocent communities across an entire region of Africa -- was resounding silence.
Now, President Obama has a historic mandate for action from Congress and the American people. This highlight video (above) we put together from last night says it all.
We are deeply grateful to the tens of thousands of you who have written letters, called, donated, joined lobby meetings, and slept on Oklahoman sidewalks to make this happen. Without your tenacity, the passage of this bill would not have been possible. This victory is yours.
With such concrete and historic results shown from our efforts together, we are strengthened in our resolve to keep going until communities across central Africa no longer fear the threat of attack and abduction by the LRA. And we look forward to working with you to help make it happen.
In the meantime, we hope you join us in celebrating this major milestone! We'll be back at you soon, with news on the signing.
--Michael
Resolve Uganda is the campaign to permanently end the conflict in Uganda, made up of people and organizations who believe that peace is possible and that together we can make it happen.
Joseph Kony’s brutal insurgency has outlasted four U.S. presidents and 11 straight sessions of Congress. It is now Africa’s longest-running conflict and it’s time for it to be over. By taking action now, U.S. policymakers can put a stop to the LRA’s atrocities across central Africa and help put northern Uganda and the surrounding region on track towards lasting peace. Use the links below to learn about how the conflict has evolved and what specifically can be done to resolve it.
After decades of neglect, peace could finally be on the horizon for the people throughout central Africa who have been caught in the crossfire of this conflict for so long. Click here to read about how this conflict has developed and why urgent action is needed to ensure that it is finally ended. For more in-depth information on the history of the war and what has been happening recently, use the links in the right sidebar.
For peace to have a chance, there will have to be more action from the international community, especially the U.S. Government. Engagement from world leaders could lead to the end of LRA violence in central Africa and help war-affected communities in northern Uganda rebuild and heal the wounds of war. But this won't happen without increased political pressure from citizens. Click here to read about what needs to be done to end this crisis once and for all, and use the menu on the right to access our latest policy briefs and information on what specifically our leaders should do.
Press Conference Calling For Change Of Course In Sudan
Tuesday May 04, 2010
Contact: Dan Scandling (202) 225-5136
MEDIA ADVISORY MEDIA ADVISORY MEDIA ADVISORY
PRESS CONFERENCE CALLING FOR CHANGE OF COURSE IN SUDAN
10:30 a.m. Wednesday, May 5, 2010 HVC 114, Studio A (Press enter through HVC 117)
Rep. Frank Wolf (R-VA) will call for Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice to retake the lead on implementing U.S. policy on Sudan. In addition, he will make several other recommendations, including that the U.S. not recognize the outcome of the recent presidential elections in Sudan.
Wolf, the co-chairman of the bipartisan Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission, is widely recognized for his leadership on issues involving Sudan over the last 20 years.
VOA:Darfur JEM Rebel Group Risks Losing Dominance. Darfur's main rebel group may risk losing its dominance in the region, as Chad ends support and rival rebel coalition gains strength. Monday, JEM - the Justice and Equality Movement - officially suspended peace talks with the government, following months of stalled negotiations. JEM has also accused the government of attacking its positions in western Darfur. The coalition of four rebel groups challenging JEM for dominance in Darfur is the Sudan Liberation and Justice Movement. "If in fact they are able to keep themselves unified, they present a fairly significant force, especially in light of the fact that Chad and Khartoum entered into agreement in which they agreed not to support each other's rebel groups. And for Chad that meant principally JEM," Hogendoorn says.
Reuters:Defeated Sudan candidate says armed, makes demands. A renegade army general in South Sudan said on Monday he had taken command of a body of soldiers and demanded the removal of the man who beat him in recent elections. South Sudan's army accused George Athor of masterminding an attack on one of its bases on Friday and plotting further assaults after he lost in the race to become governor of the oil-producing south's Jonglei state last week. The confirmation that Athor set up his own military force days after the contested vote will stoke tensions in the region already hit by tribal violence and decades of civil war.
The following editorial was published in The New York Times:Sudan's Other Crisis. One year after the International Criminal Court accused Sudan's president, Omar Hassan al-Bashir, of war crimes for the genocidal rampage in Darfur, he was re-elected in a blatantly manipulated election.
Mr. Bashir has no legitimacy and he must stand trial for his crimes. But those facts must not divert the world's attention from another potential crisis: the very real danger of renewed civil war between Arab Muslim northern Sudan and the south, which is largely Christian and animist. The last conflict -- from 1983 to 2005 -- left about two million people dead.
Under a United States-backed peace agreement, the semi-autonomous southern region will hold a referendum in January to decide its future. Voters are expected to choose independence. Leaders in both the north and the south pledged to respect the results. But there is so much oil involved that they can't be depended on to keep their word -- without strong encouragement from the United States and other major players. Read More.
The title to the post is wrong. I don't believe the statement. It is irony.
I have always had serious issues with the wording in the Declaration of Independence. Specifically this excerpt:
The history of the present King of Great Britain [George III] is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.
* See below for text that goes here.
He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.
The indigenous people had a right to protect their way of life. After all, it is felt today, that the United States has a right to protect their way of life by those who attacked the USA on September 11.
I believe the wording which calls the indigenous people "merciless Indian Savages" is full of prejudice, ignorance and racist. And here it is institutionalized in one of the most important documents - other than all those treaties the government signed with the indigenous peoples and broke one after another.
Ironic, that the following words are what is written between the above statements. Some of the very things that the Declaration of Independence is faulting King George of Great Britain of doing to the Europeans, who landed in North America, the Europeans were doing and worse to the indigenous people already inhabiting the land being taken or stolen by the Europeans.
* He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.
He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.
He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.
He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.
He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.
He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.
He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance.
He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the consent of our legislatures.
He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.
He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:
For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:
For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:
For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:
For depriving us, in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:
For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:
For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:
For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:
For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.
He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.
He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty and perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.
He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.
The second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence begins: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life...
"...certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life". "Life" includes health care, health insurance. And yet, so much trouble around a health care bill that provides this right to life, even for those who can't afford insurance.
................................................ Some irony in this video.
The pledge of allegiance to the USA flag, which there was such a flurry about during the Presidential campaign ends with the words "with liberty and justice for all". There were false claims at that time, that Barack Obama would not wear a patriotic flag pin or say the pledge of allegiance.
There is a lack of "justice for all", if not all can afford health care.
...because if I could know that, I would want to work for the success of that campaign. We are nothing if we take the stand that there is nothing that we can do to change the course of inhumanity to human beings. I am appalled when I read the narcissistic comments at youtube. On the other hand, I love youtube. Here is one reason why: …………………………………..
The book that is the follow-up to the Darfur Diaries film
Would you like to live on sand without any facilities, any comforts at all and no protection? These people have been doing it for four years now. Who cares? Do YOU?
Below is a post that got buried in one of my earliest posts. And back then, I had no readers. But, now, I do, so I thought I would repost this. It is about my visit to the Dachau Concentration Camp.
You may have noticed if you have checked me out at all, that I have a passion for Social Justice and Human Dignity through Human Rights. I don't know why I'm like this, but I am. And I'm really okay with it. I mean I live my life passionately and I make no apologies for this. It doesn't mean that I don't hear a little voice of fear rearing its ugly and devious head much of the time - I do. I have little pieces of paper posted around my house for me to see the quotes of various people - and this is one that is appropriate at this place in the post:
"When I dare to be powerful - to use my strength in the service of my vision, then it becomes less and less important whether I am afraid." Audre Lorde
An aside: For a year now I have been working with the Pell Center, an international policy center on the Salve Regina University campus in Newport, Rhode Island, USA, to have the film Darfur Diaries - Message from Home screened.
http://www.darfurdiaries.org And March 5, the contract was signed with Jen Marlowe, one of the young producers and directors of this film to come and speak, answer questions at the Jane Pickens Theatre on Washington Square, Newport, Rhode Island, USA, March 25, Sunday, at 7:00 p.m. after the film is shown. This is very exciting to me. I own this film on DVD. You may purchase it on http://www.amazon.com
Genocide is NOT OKAY . . . . . . . . . . . . . Or is it?
A little over year ago, on November 22, (2005), I spent 6 hours at the Dachau Extermination Camp in Dachau, Germany. It was the last day of a 22 day trip – all of which was light-hearted until this day. Other days were spent in Villach, Innsbruck, Salzburg, Austria; Venice, San Gimignano, Siena, Italy; and Munich and Dachau, Germany. The intense experience stayed with me while up in the air, flying all the way back to Providence’s Green Airport and for the weeks to follow. To walk through the stone arch where the victims were expected to and did go, then, walk in the sacred buildings, rooms, the oven room, and the sacred grounds where four churches or church memorials are stealing away the space once used to create hell on earth……was all so indescribably sobering and humbling. I walked this ground alone. On a cold, gray sky day in November, stepping over furrowed and compacted snow. But I had shoes and warm clothes to call my own. And I knew I could leave. Alive. This place was “far away” from my home too. Just like Africa. Dachau was the very first concentration camp opened by Adolf Hitler within two months of his reign of power. It was opened on Wednesday, March 22, 1933. Adolf Hitler was given power with the blessings of the people and the Lutheran Church. It was a time of lamentations in the aftermath of World War I - no jobs, the masses going hungry. That is what I read about for two hours in the first small space that I entered. What was the environment for this kind of thing to be done by humans to humans? The Dachau Camp was a training center for the SS concentration camp guards, then they were sent to other camps. I photographed a large campaign poster for Hitler while in this first room, the words on the poster: “Our Last Hope”. Not only did Jewish people go to Dachau, but ministers, priests, Jehovah Witnesses, homosexuals, the mentally challenged, communists and anyone who spoke out against the government’s actions. We have a moral obligation in this country to speak out against our government’s actions if we believe in our hearts that something is wrong. That is who we should be and what we should have the courage to live out. I believe - it’s an unspoken creed of decency.
My port of entry and departure of this trip (inspired by free points to fly somewhere, anywhere) was Munich, the birthplace of the Nazi party where Hitler honed his craft of speaking to the masses.
When I arrived the morning of November 2, traveling by train and looking out the window while going from the airport to downtown Munich, something struck me with awe in a way. I saw fields, flat land, country fields with rows of crops cut away, bounded by fences, clusters of trees that had not been cut down to make way for farming, farm houses, barns, cattle. It looked JUST LIKE HOME IN NORTHERN INDIANA. The trees were even maples and others that I recognized, the same kind I grew up knowing the common names of in the woods where two of my three childhood houses were situated. It felt like home. The names painted on the barns were the same names painted on barns in Indiana and the same familiar last names of classmates’ that I went to Indiana public schools with. And yet there I was only a short distance from the Dachau Extermination Camp, where evil could be smelled for miles around from 1933 until 1945. The years when my parents were kids. Sitting alone, type in “Dachau Concentration Camp” in the google window of your computer and merely have the haunting feelings these people realized every minute of the day and night. Try
These things we do to one another…Whether it is genocide, or complicity for genocide’s madness to be allowed to carry on. Whether it be something small, like saying words in a calloused or intentionally mean-spirited way to another humankind’s brother or sister - this thing we could change if we only had the will. What is this thing in us, that is so dark that we will do anything not to confront it and hide from it? Life can be grand. I love my life, I truly do. But life can go seriously wrong, too. I know that too. I’ve had my share of that. Just working at being thoughtful, here. Something that a busy, hurried life allows us to evade.
We each have a voice, we each have a presence - let us not be silent. This is a pivotal time in our personal lives, in our representational government's "life" to stand and say who we are, not what we have been, because our United States history's policy on genocide is dismal and excruciatingly painful. It is the season we claim “Peace on Earth”.
Let us stand together and let's not be moved from the right things to do regarding our being human. We have been called to be human in the most basic way on this subject. Where there is a will - there is always a way. And where there is no will - there is never a way. This is not so much a religious principle, as it is simply a virtue of character, that is embraced in various religions around the world. We are our brothers' and sisters' keepers.
I am one person, but I am on a mission. You are one person, who I am sure has a heart and a soul that wants the same as the Darfuri and Chadian people want – a safe environment for their families to live out their days here as mortal beings.
When the Nazis arrested the Communists,I said nothing; after all, I was not a Communist. When they locked up the Social Democrats,I said nothing; after all, I was not a Social Democrat. When they arrested the trade unionists,I said nothing; after all, I was not a trade unionist. When they arrested the Jews,I said nothing; after all, I was not a Jew. When they arrested me, there was no longer anyone who could protest.
……………………………………………………translated by Bob Berkovitz
Thank you for your heart, your soul.
Thank you.
The end of the repost submission.
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The Darfur Diaries film
Darfur Diaries: Message From Home Run-time: 57 minutes
Synopsis: In October, 2004 a team of three independent filmmakers – Aisha Bain, Jen Marlowe and Adam Shapiro – left for Darfur, Sudan and eastern Chad. After monitoring the worsening political and humanitarian crisis for months and recognizing that the mainstream media offered marginal and inadequate coverage, the team set out with the goal of providing a platform for the people of Darfur (both those displaced inside Darfur and those living in refugee camps in Chad) to speak for themselves about their experiences, their fears, and their hopes for the future. The conflict serves as the ongoing narrative in the film, but the focus is on the people who are living through what has been termed a “genocide.” Through the voices of refugees, displaced persons, and in particular women and children, who are always among the most vulnerable in any conflict situation, this film seeks to provide space for the marginalized victims of atrocities to speak and to engage with the world. Additionally, the film probes the history, culture and heritage of Darfur as a means of deepening understanding of the crisis and complicating easily assumed perceptions by which the conflict is often portrayed (such as a matter of race, ethnicity or religion).
The film presents the Darfurians the filmmakers met (refugees and displaced peoples, civilians and fighters resisting the Sudanese government, child soldiers, teachers, students, parents, children and community leaders) as a people with full lives, culture, and heritage--people with homes that they desperately want to return back to, people undergoing traumatic loss but who demonstrate inspiring strength and resilience, and people whose lives, homes, safety and rights deserve to be protected vigilantly as a fundamental human right.
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Meet the Producers/Directors of Darfur Diaries
Which is, now, a book, as well as, a movie:
Jen Marlowe is a founding member of the "Rachel's Words" initiative (www.rachelswords.org). She is also currently facilitating a youth peace-building project in Mostar, Bosnia-Hercegovina. From 2000-2004, she coordinated and directed a conflict transformation program in Jerusalem, creating and implementing co-existence programs for hundreds of Palestinian and Israeli youth. In addition, she worked in conflict resolution with youth in Afghanistan, and facilitated dialogue groups between youth from India and Pakistan, and Turkish and Greek Cypriot youth. Previously, Jen was the artistic director of Two Roads Theatre Ensemble, a theatre education company in Seattle, WA and a teaching artist at Seattle Children's Theatre. Jen holds a B.A. from University of Pennsylvania in psychology.
Aisha Bain is the Asia Program Associate at Global Rights: Partners for Justice, where she works on women’s rights in India and environmental rights in Mongolia. She completed her Masters degree in the International Peace and Conflict Resolution Program in the School of International Service with a concentration in Human Rights at AmericanUniversity. Before arriving at AU, she served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Madagascar and traveled throughout much of the Horn of Africa. She served as Deputy Director at the Center for the Prevention of Genocide where she worked extensively investigating and reporting the massacres in Darfur and Northern Uganda, and lobbying for international action. She has also conducted extensive field research in human trafficking in South East Asia in summer 2004.
Adam Shapiro most recently served as Country Director in Afghanistan for the international human rights organization Global Rights (www.globalrights.org). He is a Ph.D. candidate in International Relations at AmericanUniversity, and holds an MA in Politics from New YorkUniversity and an MA in Arab Studies from GeorgetownUniversity. Adam is a founding member of InCounter Productions which produced the documentary film, About Baghdad (Spring 2004- www.aboutbaghdad.com), based on filming in Baghdad,Iraq in 2003. Adam is also a co-founder of the International Solidarity Movement (www.palsolidarity.org) in Palestine and lived and worked in the OccupiedPalestinianTerritories for three years. He has lived and worked throughout the Arab world and speaks Arabic. Adam serves on the Board of Directors of Partners for Peace (www.partnersforpeace.org) and as a Member of the Executive Team of Imagine Life (www.imagine-life.org)
Please consider Using Your Voice to Stop the Genocide in Darfur Your Voice is So Important:
This is a wonderful movie which hopefully will inspire you to be alive with conscience and do something about the injustice done to humans by humans. Consider seeing this movie. PLEASE, sign the petition of Amazing Changes Campaign http://www.theamazingchange.com/abolish.html
Do more than see the movie, "AMAZING GRACE". Be inspired to act. . . to act with our own "will" and "force" of passion, conviction and knowing the truth.
“Loose Change to Loosen Chains” Use your loose change to free slaves around the world.
Email Zach Hunter, a fifteen year old, who wants to put an end to world-wide slavery Tell him know what you are doing in your community to end slavery: contact@theamazingchange.com
"We are the people who run this country," Molly Ivins said. "We are the deciders. And every single day, every single one of us needs to step outside and take some action to help stop this war. We need people in the streets, banging pots and pans and demanding, 'Stop it, now!' "
I so “heart” this woman. My sentiments exactly. I have written and spoken the same belief many times in my expressed passion, my speeches, my writing. “We the people” need to own our government. It is ours to own. President Bush is not the government. He certainly doesn’t represent my views, my conviction, my passions. If our politicians are doing something that we believe is not worthy of our name, then we need to stand up, speak out, never feign our loyalty, nor hide our light under any d*** bushel – if you know what I mean. We ARE the light and if we don’t shine a light on what’s wrong and what’s right, then when we find ourselves in the darkness of our laziness and disrespect for our own pain – we’ll so need that dose of humor that Molly scooped up and dished out. Just to get ourselves out of the human hell that we appear to relish. Let’s find that little whimper of a voice, America. Let’s rekindle our passion for justice for all, including the disenfranchised. Where is our backbone? If you don’t use your “freedom of speech” then I dare say you don’t have any. (And I can be funny . . . really. Just got steamed for the moment.)
I wasn’t going to post today.Had other things to do . . . you know those things that don’t move the soul or warm the heart, unless it’s that they got done.But I was doing my free weights routine, walked over to the computer to check out the numbers rising on my blog here and ended up by chance or destiny coming across what I am about to share.I am an activist of justive, human dignity and human value.I found this website that had my posts all over it.I was somewhat surprised and flabbergasted.I was cruising through the site after I “identified myself” with the listings at this site http://technorati.com/ and came across a blog called darfurdyingforheroes.And Darfur very much is dying for us to be heroes.
She explained her views on gun control this way: "I am not anti-gun. I'm pro-knife. Consider the merits of the knife. In the first place, you have to catch up with someone in order to stab him. A general substitution of knives for guns would promote physical fitness. We'd turn into a whole nation of great runners. Plus, knives don't ricochet. And people are seldom killed while cleaning their knives."
She said of a certain beloved former president while he was in office that "if you put his brains in a bee, it would fly backwards" and that "if he gets even more sedate, we will have to water him twice a week."
And she said of her affection for her home state: "I dearly love the state of Texas, but I consider that a harmless perversion on my part, and discuss it only with consenting adults."
Boy, will we miss Molly Ivins, the writer and happy agitator who succumbed Wednesday to cancer -- a disease, she said, not sparing herself from her own lashing wit, that "can kill you, but it doesn't make you a better person." Yes, we will remember her for being raucously funny, always at the expense of the wealthy, the powerful or the Texas legislature.
But because she made you laugh and broke all the rules of polite commentary ("I believe in practicing prudence at least once every two or three years"), Molly made you forget how deadly serious she was about politics, democracy and social justice.
More than just about any other columnist I can think of, Molly was a genuine populist, to make proper reference to a word she couldn't stand to see misused by charlatans. She believed in lifting up the underdog and hated it when the wealthy made excuses for injustice.
When the victims of layoffs and downsizing complained, Molly said some years ago, they were met with "a more sophisticated version of 'So what.' This is the gig where you make yourself look wise by tugging your chin and opining, 'Well, yes, there is a problem, but there's really nothing we can do about it. Blah, blah, economic globalization, blah, blah, technological change, blah, blah, only long-term solutions.' " To Molly, this was all self-interested nonsense.
Molly paid far more attention than most reporters to the details of budget bills and was always on the barricades when poor people were being shortchanged. During the great government shutdown of 1995, when most journalists were obsessing over the personal drama of Clinton vs. Gingrich, Molly was writing about cuts to the Supplemental Security Income program.
She could talk CBO and OMB with the best of the budget mavens. Nobody much noticed because she'd keep people reading with such phrases as "the lick log" -- I can't translate that one -- and "fruitcake tax giveaways."
She believed in democratic politics and hated it when people didn't exercise their rights to vote and protest. She believed in government and hated it when people ran it down.
"This is a column," she wrote in September 2005, "for everyone in the path of Hurricane Katrina who ever said, 'I'm sorry, I'm just not interested in politics,' or, 'There's nothing I can do about it,' or, 'Eh, they're all crooks anyway.' . . . Look around you this morning. I suppose the National Rifle Association would argue, 'Government policies don't kill people, hurricanes kill people.' Actually, hurricanes plus government policies kill people."
I became a Molly fan many years ago when we both worked at the New York Times, a place where she was as inconspicuous as a tarantula on a piece of angel food cake (to steal shamelessly from Raymond Chandler). I was blessed to have dinner with her last November. She was dying but had lost none of her capacity for joyful outrage.
And joy was the key. Another thing she hated was anybody who didn't think that fighting the good fight was a kick. She left us all with a charge a few years ago:
"Keep fighting for freedom and justice, beloveds, but don't forget to have fun doin' it. Lord, let your laughter ring forth. Be outrageous, ridicule the fraidy-cats, rejoice in all the oddities that freedom can produce."
If I may say so without raising complex theological issues, at least the hereafter is now a better place. Molly Ivins is the only person I can think of who, upon entering heaven, would start making jokes at God's expense and get God to laugh with her.
Why him and not Hillary? Well, I have my rational, thoughtful reasons. And then there is a reason that may not be so reasonable, but it's still important. I feel lifted up by his attitude and the way he exudes excitement and his expression of simple democratic values of caring for people that have been forgotten for way too long. We need to get back to "the people". He inspires. Hillary doens't affect me in that way. She is so very talented, gifted and needed. But, so much, we need a leader who can rally our lost hope and excitement in our basic values. We need charged up.
I saw Diane Sawyer's "Waiting for the World to Change" 20/20 story in Camden, New Jersey, Friday night. How depressing was that?! You just couldn't turn away from the spirit that these children were having so little support from their community and country. The little kindergarten boy who could count the 3 wheels on a tricycle - but who couldn't say how many meals we have a day because for him there were NEVER 3 meals a day. The little girl who in the short time that Diane knew her had eyes and a spirit that went from youthful exuberance to eyes that were lifeless and a spirit that had been drained. The young man who lived in a drug infested Camden neighborhood and worked a job to help the family through high school. You had to see where they lived to get the impact of his story. He slept on the floor with the bugs crawling. He so wanted to make his dad proud and be able to graduate high school in a place that it was most uncommon. He worked harder than you or I ever did to get that diploma. After much fear that it wouldn't come to pass for him, it did. We must care about the poor in our country. We must care about the victims of Katrina. We must. But if we dont' - we will continue to pay, one way or the other
If any of you read my January 25 post " BROTHERS AND SISTERS Finds The Great Divide in the USA" over at my blog at tvguide.com, as ilovemylife, you will understand when I say the following. I went to Huntington College for a year and a half. While there I worked as a creative editor on the college newspaper and boldly made the move to artistically create the following quote as a full front page statement:
"Remember all those things we used to blame on the devil
and all those things we left up to God?
Now it's all a hundred times more complicated.
We Must Become New Men (and Women)
OR Be Satisfied As We ARE . . .
either way WE risk tragedy."
(from Joseph Pintauro's little book, "to believe in man"
I love my life. I love where I live. And I am passionate about my passions. I love to dance. Necessary to live: music, piano, singing, writing, acting, painting.
I have been fighting for and supporting the arts all my adult life. Since 2004, I have been working with other activists to end the Darfur genocide.
I have traveled to Europe many times since my early twenties. Places I have been: many USA states including Hawaii, Montreal, Canada, Barbados, France, Spain, Luxembourg, England, Austria, Switzerland, Italy, Greece and Germany - and have wonderful memories.
My last trip was in May - June 2013 to Spain.
I would like to travel to Europe and Kyoto, Japan.
I love the southwest where I have visited Hopi, Navajo, Zia and San Idlefonso potters.
Life is exciting and I intend to live it full-out to the end.
B.S. and M.M., both in music
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Khartoum, Sudan Stop Genocide Time
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Spain Time
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Melbourne Time
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Hawaii Time
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RAFA NADAL -BRING BACK LONG PANTS - SLEEVELESS TOPS
Double Click on Videos to Enlarge
Darfur - The Abandoned Genocide - a video by Sandra Hammel
Want to help? Call 1~800~GENOCIDE
"May I Suggest" by Susan Werner
Satchita - Playing for Change
Stand By Me ~ Playing for Change
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Genocide is not only a word,
it is crying of the whole human race.
There is nothing redeeming about being silent
when speaking up is the humane thing to do.
The honor and integrity of the human race is at stake.
