One of These Days...

Yeah, one of these days I'm gonna add a separate blog list. There are so many good ones out there that deserve a link, a shout out. I tried already to do this, but the links didn't activate, and I've been moving around so much the past year, that too much of the work I want to do falls by the wayside. But this is temporary. Those of you running on the worker hamster wheel know what I'm talking about.

And I've gotta add something to a Clapso comment. He said, "A.N.S.W.E.R. pisses a lot of groups off--they must be doing something right."

The following are other activists who pissed off a lot of groups, and governments... all of them pissed people off so much they were assassinated and/or imprisoned: If you're reading this, and you have other names to add to the list, please send 'em.

1. Bobby Kennedy
2. JFK
3. Ernesto Che Guevara
4. Malcolm X
5. Mohandas Gandhi
6. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
7. Nelson Mandela
8. Rosa Parks
9. Dorothy Day
10. Lech Walesa
11. Mary Harris (Mother) Jones
12. Jesus
13. Aung San Suu Kyi

I remember when Mandela came to Miami Beach after being sprung from a South African prison. His many supporters gathered outside the Miami Beach Convention Center, while a small but very loud group of anti Mandela protesters tried to shout us down, run us off.

Something Gandhi said : "First they ignore you, then they laugh at you. Then they fight you, then you win."

At this time, the powers that be in D.C. are fighting the group A.N.S.W.E.R. and its ant-war message, because ANSWER has been effective in getting its message out, and can no longer be ignored or laughed off. In a city where--by all accounts, political posters plaster the landscape, $10,000 in fines for postering is overkill. Especially when those fees and fines target only selected posters. With these fines, the D.C. government is attempting to silence political dissent, stifle protesters whose views oppose its agenda, and shut down a group whose beliefs are contrary to its own, by burying the group under a mountain of paperwork and debt.

We have a thing called the First Amendment. Nowhere does it say free speech is only for folks who agree with "W," or whoever happens to reside in the White House.

Is this the America we want to live in?