author

Margaret Elizabeth Sangster: A Returning Soldier Speaks and The Indian Raid

Margaret E. Sangster was a nineteenth century author and editor. While she published both articles and books, she is perhaps best known for her editorial work. While she has been connected editorially with five different publications, she is probably most noted for her work as editor of Harper's Bazaar.

Truth: David Ray Griffin

 

David Ray Griffin 

Theologian, Professor, Author,  9/11 Truth Activist 

(1939-  )

There are literally dozens of problems in the official account of 9/11 sufficiently serious to show the official story to be false. But the clearest proof is provided by the video of the World Trade Center building # 7 coming straight down in absolute free fall.

And yet, even though this proof has existed in plain sight for all these years, the fact that 9/11 was an inside job, and hence a State Crime Against Democracy, has remained a hidden fact.

 

Additional Quote by David Ray Griffin

We refuse to let our knowledge, however limited, be informed by your ignorance, however vast.

 
Biography

David Ray Griffin’s life journey has lead him to pursue the knowledge of theology, to reconcile the pervasive divide between science and religion, and to uncover the truth about the complicity of the US government in the 9/11 attacks. For many years, Dr. Griffin dedicated himself to studying and presenting, in widely read essays, speeches, and books, the role of religion in modern life, including the commonalities between religion and science. Following the September attacks on New York and Washington, he began researching the reasons for and the consequences of this single event, believing it is his responsibility as a theologian to publicly divulge his findings.  
 
Growing up in a small town in Oregon, David Ray Griffin was an active participant in the Disciples of Christ Church which led to his decision to become a minister. After obtaining his master’s degree in counseling from the University of Oregon in 1963, Griffin went on to study philosophical theology and consequently attended the Claremont Graduate University in California, where, in 1968, he was awarded a Ph.D in Philosophy of Religion and Theology. At Claremont, Griffin became interested in process theology, in particular the ideas of Alfred North Whitehead, which he argues provides a sound basis for addressing contemporary social and ecological issues.
 
In 1973, he, along with theologian James Cobb, established the Center for Process Studies at the Claremont School of Theology and remains as one of its co-directors. For more than three decades, he was a professor of religion and theology at Claremont. He is a prolific writer and editor of books on spiritual and theological issues.   
 
In addition to his theological and philosophical writings, Griffin focuses on political and social issues. He has stated that “the task of a theologian is to look at the world from what we would imagine the divine perspective, one that would care about the good of the whole and would love all the parts.” In several books, the most well-known being The New Pearl Harbor: Disturbing Questions about the Bush Administration and 9/11, Griffin examines in detail the inconsistencies, contradictions, and coincidences surrounding the New York attacks, concluding that the Bush Administration was complicit in the deadly events. If 9/11 “was brought about by forces within our own government,” Griffin says, “[and thus] is antithetical to the general good, it is the responsibility of a theologian and public intellectual to probe and explore the issue.” “He comes to his controversial conclusions with lucidity and calm,” states Reyhan Harmanci of the San Francisco Chronicle. Catholic New Times critic Rosemary Radford Ruether notes that Griffin avoids “inflammatory rhetoric” and bases his opinion “not on any one conclusive piece of evidence, but the sheer accumulation of all of the data.”  
 
Because of his work regarding 9/11, David Ray Griffin and the 9/11 Truth Movement were nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2008 and 2009. To support the nomination, Norwegian professors with 9/11 Truth Norway wrote: David Ray Griffin and the 9/11 Truth Movement have presented convincing evidence showing that this 'war elite' carried out these attacks to establish a new enemy after the Cold War, and to start wars in line with their economic and political interests. We believe the most important contribution to peace in the 21st century is the disclosure of these elite political games and the removal of the false reasons for its aggressive wars. This Griffin and the 9/11 Truth Movement have done in an excellent way. If the attack on 11 September was a U.S. 'false flag operation' to justify wars in the Middle East, the disclosure of that fact should be honored with the Nobel Peace Prize. We therefore nominate David Ray Griffin and the 9/11 Truth Movement to share the Nobel Peace Prize for 2008.  
A courageous and true statesman, David Ray Griffin has dedicated his life to exploring the truth, in theology and philosophy and in society. “Most of my work” he explains, “is on issues that I think are of central importance in a worldview capable of sustaining a sense of the meaning and importance of life, and an ethical stance adequate to the needs of the present and future situation of the world.”

 

Truth: Grace Lee Boggs

 

Grace Lee Boggs 

Activist, Community Leader, Author

 (1915 - )

People are aware that they cannot continue in the same old way but are immobilized because they cannot imagine an alternative. We need a vision that recognizes that we are at one of the great turning points in human history when the survival of our planet and the restoration of our humanity require a great sea change in our ecological, economic, political, and spiritual values.

 

Additional Quotes by Grace Lee Boggs

  • I believe that we are at the point now, in the United States, where a movement is beginning to emerge. I think that the calamity, the quagmire of the Iraq war, the outsourcing of jobs, the drop-out of young people from the education system, the monstrous growth of the prison-industrial complex, the planetary emergency, which we are engulfed at the present moment, is demanding that instead of just complaining about these things, instead of just protesting about these things, we begin to look for, and hope for, another way of living. And I think that-- that's where the movement-- I-- I see a movement beginning to emerge, 'cause I see hope beginning to trump despair.
  •  The struggle we're dealing with these days, which, I think, is part of what the 60s represented, is how do we define our humanity?
  • In order to grapple with the interacting and seemingly intractable questions of today’s society, we need to see ourselves not mainly as victims but as new men and women who, recognizing the sacredness in ourselves and in others, can view love and compassion not as some “sentimental weakness but as the key that somehow unlocks the door which leads to ultimate reality.” (Martin Luther King)
  • How are we going to make our livings in a society becoming increasingly jobless because of hi-tech and outsourcing? Where will we get the imagination to recognize that for most of human history the concept of Jobs didn’t even exist? Work, as distinguished from Labor, was done to produce needed goods and services, develop skills and artistry, and nurture cooperation.
  • What will move us to care for our biosphere instead of using our technological mastery to increase the speed at which we are making it uninhabitable?
  • How do we redefine education so that 30-50 percent of inner-city children do not drop out of school, thus ensuring that millions will end up in prison?
  • Can we build an America in which people of all races and ethnicities live together in harmony, and Euro-Americans, in particular, celebrate their role as one among many minorities constituting the multiethnic majority?
  • How do we achieve reconciliation with the two-thirds of the world that increasingly resents our economic, military, and cultural domination?
  • These are the times to grow our souls. Each of us is called upon to embrace the conviction that despite the powers and principalities bent on commodifying all our human relationships, we have the power within us to create the world anew.
  • We can begin by doing small things at the local level, like planting community gardens or looking out for our neighbors. That is how change takes place in living systems, not from above but from within, from many local actions occurring simultaneously.
  • We never know how our small activities will affect others through the invisible fabric of our connectedness. In this exquisitely connected world, it’s never a question of ‘critical mass.’ It’s always about critical connections.
  • People are aware that they cannot continue in the same old way but are immobilized because they cannot imagine an alternative. We need a vision that recognizes that we are at one of the great turning points in human history when the survival of our planet and the restoration of our humanity require a great sea change in our ecological, economic, political, and spiritual values.
  • Rebellions tend to be negative, to denounce and expose the enemy without providing a positive vision of a new future...A revolution is not just for the purpose of correcting past injustices, a revolution involves a projection of man/woman into the future...It begins with projecting the notion of a more human human being, i.e. a human being who is more advanced in the specific qualities which only human beings have - creativity, consciousness and self-consciousness, a sense of political and social responsibility.
  • I think we're not looking sufficiently at what is happening at the grassroots in the country. We have not emphasized sufficiently the cultural revolution that we have to make among ourselves in order to force the government to do differently. Things do not start with governments.
  • [P]eople think of evolution mainly in terms of anatomical changes. I think that we have to think of evolution in terms of-- very elemental human changes. and so, we're evolving both through our knowledge and through our experiences to another a stage of human-- humankind. So, revolution and evolution are no longer so separate.
  • Do something local. Do something real, however, small. And don't-- don't diss the political things, but understand their limitations.
  • It takes a whole lot of things. It takes people doing things. It takes people talking about things. It takes dialogue. It takes changing the whole lot of ways by which we think.
  • I think we have to rethink the concept of "leader." 'Cause "leader" implies "follower." And, so many-- not so many, but I think we need to appropriate, embrace the idea that we are the leaders we've been looking for.
  • You cannot change any society unless you take responsibility for it, unless you see yourself as belonging to it and responsible for changing it.
 
Biography
 
 A prominent activist her entire adult life, Grace Lee was born in Rhode Island in 1915, the daughter of Chinese immigrants. She studied at Barnard College and Bryn Mawr, receiving her Ph.D. in 1940. Her studies in philosophy and the writings of Marx, Hegel, and Mead led not to a life in academia teaching others to question themselves and those in power, but rather to a lifetime of social activism and collaboration with others.

For Lee, it began in Chicago, where she joined the movement for tenants’ rights, and then the Workers Party, a splinter group of the Socialist Workers Party. In these associations, as well as in her involvement with the 1941 March on Washington, Lee found her niche as an activist in the African-American community, focusing specifically on marginalized groups such as women and people of color. In 1953, Lee married black auto worker and activist James Boggs and moved to Detroit, where she remains an activist today, writing columns for the Michigan Citizen. James died in 1993.

Grace Lee Boggs embraces a philosophy of constant questioning – not just of who we are as individuals, but of how we relate to those in our community and country, to those in other countries, and to the local and global environment. Boggs has rejected the idea of the stereotypical radical as one who only views capitalist society as something to be done away with, believing more that “you cannot change any society unless you take responsibility for it, unless you see yourself as belonging to it and responsible for changing it.” It is in smaller groups, working together, that positive social change can happen, rather than in larger revolutions where one group of power simply changes position with another. That is why, in 1992, she and her husband founded Detroit Summer, a community movement bringing people of all races, cultures, and ages together to rebuild Detroit - a city Boggs has described as “a symbol of the end of industrial society…buildings that were once architectural marvels, like the Book Cadillac hotel and Union Station, lie in ruins…and in most neighborhoods people live behind triple-locked doors and barred windows.” Working literally from the ground up, Detroit Summer’s activities include planting community gardens in vacant lots, creating huge murals on buildings, and renovating houses. There is a Center set up in honor of Grace Lee and James Boggs,http://www.boggscenter.org, which fosters their ideas and encourages independent thinking and leadership. You can read several of her speeches and columns on its website.

 

Truth: Stan Goff

Stan Goff 

Author, Veteran, Anti-war Activist, Feminist

(1951-  )

The physical reality is that "sustainable growth" is an oxymoron. A soft energy landing from the last two hundred years of development will require massive conservation, especially by the overdeveloped countries, and that can only happen in a nongrowth ( and therefore noncapitalist ) society. The choice is now becoming either capitalism or humanity.

 

Additional Quotes by Stan Goff

  • We need to ask ourselves, however, what sowing the winds of war abroad will reap at home.
  • The precursors of fascism -- militarization of culture, vigilantism, masculine fear of female power, xenophobia and economic destabilization -- are ascendant in America today.
  • In American society right now, with the immigration hysteria fueled by faux populists like CNN's execrable Lou Dobbs, there is a growing wave of xenophobia that has begun to legitimate vigilantism.
Biography
 
Stan Goff grew up in a conservative, staunchly anti-communist family, which informed his early political ideas. In 1970, he joined the Army, which he would do at several other points in his life. Goff retired in 1996 as a Special Forces Master Sergeant. During his tenure, he was sent to places such as Vietnam, Haiti, Panama, Colombia, and Somalia, participating in part of several different military attachments. Goff would later write that his time spent in Latin America shifted his politics to the left. His experiences, particularly in Haiti, are recounted in his 2000 book Hideous Dream – A Soldier’s Memoir of the US Invasion of Haiti.

In between terms in the military, Goff studied literature and philosophy at Garland Community College, Henderson State College, and the University of Arkansas at Monticello. Soon after retirement, Goff began a career in activism, studying Marxism and briefly joining the Communist Party USA. After the September 11, 2001 attacks, Goff became active as a speaker against an invasion. His status as a veteran gave him credence and popularity with anti-war activists. In 2003, Goff wrote “Bring ‘Em On?” for the online journal Counterpunch. It was a response to the phrase “Bring ‘em on” uttered by President Bush regarding Iraqi guerrillas, and in the article he compared the Iraq war to his experience in Vietnam. He wrote of being told by a fellow veteran that “All Vietnamese were the enemy…this was a race war. Within one month, it was apparent that everything he told me was true, and that every reason that was given to the American Public for the war was not true.” He ended by stating that President Bush’s “legitimacy has been eroded as even the mainstream press has discovered that the pretext for the war was a lie. It may have been control over the oil, after all.” The popularity of this article led to his meeting with other veterans and anti-war activists, and soon to the formation of the organization Bring Them Home Now. His 2004 book Full Spectrum Disorder – The Military in the New American Century, critiques US foreign policy. According to the publisher, Goff “depicts the new ‘American Empire’ as over-reliant on technology, ignorant of the lessons of history, and backward in the stereotyping of other countries.”

Recently, Goff has included feminism in his studies and writings, particularly how it pertains to war. This re-examination comes together in Sex and War, where he argues that war is not an instinct of man, but rather, “men are made into killers by governments, corporations, and systems of power.” His latest book is a compilation of essays, titled Energy War.

Stan Goff has an extremely active voice on the Internet. He is a frequent contributor on the blog The Huffington Post. He also maintains his own blog called Feral Scholar, and a website at http://home.igc.org/~sherrynstan/ . He is also a principal member of the website Insurgent American. It is a website describing itself as a “practical strategic resource,” and defining insurgents as “pretty much anyone who disagrees with the dominant consensus and does even a little bit more than talk about it…we exist to promote a fundamental transformation of power relations within our society.”

 

Truth: Cindy Sheehan

Cindy Sheehan

Mother, Anti-War Activist, Peace Advocate, Author  

(1957 -  )

George, your reckless and wanton foreign policies killed my son, Spc. Casey Austin Sheehan, in the illegal and unjust war on Iraq. Helping to bring about your political downfall will be the most  noble accomplishment of my life, and it will bring justice for my son and the hundreds of other brave Americans and tens of thousands of innocent Iraqis your lies have killed.

 

Additional Quotes by Cindy Sheehan

  • 58% of the American public are with us. We're preaching to the choir, but the choir's not singing, if all of the 58% started singing, this war would end.
  •  I admire President Chavez for his strength to resist the United States. Instead, Bush is waging a war of terrorism against the world.
  •  I believe that any candidate who supports the war should not receive our support. It doesn't matter if they're Senator Clinton or whoever.
  •  I was told my son was killed in the war on terror. He was killed by George Bush's war of terror on the world.
  • I would love to support Hillary for president if she would come out against the travesty in Iraq. But I don't think she can speak out against the occupation because she supports it.
  • I'm just so honored that the universe chose me to be the spark that has set off a raging inferno.
  • I've always admired President Chavez for standing up to imperialism and the meddling of the American government in South America.
  • If we stick together as an American people we can bring down the war criminals that are running our country right now.
  • It's up to us, the people, to break immoral laws, and resist. As soon as the leaders of a country lie to you, they have no authority over you. These maniacs have no authority over us. And they might be able to put our bodies in prison, but they can't put our spirits in prison.
  • My son was killed in 2004. I am not paying my taxes for 2004. You killed my son, George Bush, and I don't owe you a penny.
  • So what really gets me is these chickenhawks, who sent our kids to die, without ever serving in a war themselves. They don't know what it's all about.
  • The war in Iraq will end, our troops will come home, Bush will be impeached and he will be brought to justice.
  • We can't let somebody rise to the top who will pardon these war criminals. Because they need to go to prison for what they've done in this world. We can't have a pardon. They need to pay for what they've done.
  • We haven't been happy with the way the war has been handled. The president has changed his reasons for being over there every time a reason is proven false or an objective reached.
  • We really need to stop the imperialist tendencies of countries like the United States and Great Britain.
  • What is the 'noble cause' for which you sent our country to war.
  • When I was growing up, it was 'Communists'. Now it's 'Terrorists'. So you always have to have somebody to fight and be afraid of, so the war machine can build more bombs, guns, and bullets and everything.


Biography

Cindy Lee Miller Sheehan was born on July 10, 1957. A longtime resident of California, she is one of the strongest, most personal and persistent voices in the movement against the war in Iraq. Patrick and Cindy Sheehan had four children – Casey, Carly, Andy, and Janey. Casey was the eldest. The whole family was active in the church – Cindy was once a Youth Minister. They were a tightly knit family, which, according to Cindy, “did everything together.”

Cindy’s world changed forever when, on a mission on April 4, 2004 to help other troops in Sadr City, Spc. Casey Sheehan was tragically killed. She and other military families met with President George W. Bush in June of 2004. By October, Cindy decided her son’s death would spur her into action. She wrote, “I was ashamed that I hadn’t tried to stop the war before Casey died…Well, I now felt that if I couldn’t make a difference, I would at least try.” Her quest to end the war, bring soldiers home, and hold politicians responsible for the decisions that sent the troops to Iraq initially, has been indefatigable.

During the January 2005 Presidential Inauguration of George W. Bush, Cindy was speaking at the opening of Eyes Wide Open: the Human Cost of War. The American Friends Service Committee had created a traveling exhibition of combat boots, each pair representing a U.S. military casualty. From this experience, the idea for Gold Star Families for Peace was born. In an interview, Cindy describes the organization as one that “I founded in January 2005. When a mom has a child killed in a war, she becomes a Gold Star Mom. Well, we expanded the idea to include all family members because an entire family is affected because of the death.” It is a support and activist group, and can be found here at http://www.gsfp.org/ .

In early August of 2005, Cindy, or “Peace Mom”, as she has come to be called, camped in a ditch near President Bush’s ranch in Crawford, Texas. She was requesting a second personal meeting with the president, who had declared that the fallen soldiers had died for a “noble cause”. Cindy wanted to know exactly what that cause was, and to demand an immediate end to what she viewed as an unjust and immoral war. So many people, activists, and celebrities stopped by or joined in to show their support, that her somewhat spontaneous demonstration became known as “Camp Casey”. A few days later, a neighbor offered the Camp Casey participants some land to use as their base. Camp Casey has become a regular protest event, gathering when President Bush is in Crawford for holidays and vacations. Cindy has purchased land where the protesters can camp.

Between Camp Casey operations, Cindy has traveled extensively, meeting with people and leaders from all over the world, and been featured in many protests and rallies. She is credited with having revived the anti-war protest, and providing a name and face for the peace and justice movement. Her published works include Not One More Mother’s Child – an account of her first year of activism, Dear President Bush – a collection of writings and speeches, and Peace Mom: A Mother’s Journey through Heartache to Activism. 

 

Truth: Richard Grossman

 

Richard Grossman 

Human Rights Activist, Author

(1943 - )

You want sanity, democracy, community, an intact Earth? We can't get there obeying Constitutional theory and law crafted by slave masters, imperialists, corporate masters, and Nature destroyers. We can't get there kneeling before robed lawyers stockpiling class plunder precedent up their venerable sleeves. So isn't disobedience the challenge of our age? Principled, inventive, escalating disobedience to liberate our souls, to transfigure our work as humans on this Earth.

Biography

How does one person or group enact a change in the law? Through organization, activism and lobbying legislators for change. Richard Grossman has been doing just that since the 1970’s. He has worked for human rights in the workplace as well as environmental causes like clean air and safe energy. Grossman was director of Environmentalists For Full Employment, executive director of Greenpeace USA, and author of several books and pamphlets regarding both the working and the natural environment. By the mid to late 80’s, however, Grossman began to question what he was doing – not the causes he espoused, but the execution of his activism. He says, “By the late 1980’s…I had concluded that my and gazillions of other activists’ efforts were a wash. Despite courageous and persistent organizing by millions of people, collaborating in thousands of citizen groups over decades and decades, things were getting worse.”

So, Grossman began researching history and the legal system, focusing on corporations and the growth of their power and privilege. Webster’s dictionary defines a corporation as, “a body formed and authorized by law to act as a single person although constituted by one or more persons and legally endowed with various rights and duties including the capacity of succession.” In 1886, the Supreme Court granted this legality and personhood to corporations. As such, they are granted the same legal protection and ability to make laws as humans.

Armed with this information, Richard Grossman changed his tactics toward activism. In 1995, he co-founded the Program on Corporations, Law & Democracy. He says, “One of the things that we stress is that corporations don’t have rights. Rights are for people. Corporations only have privileges, and only those that we the people bestow on them. If we abandon our responsibility of defining the corporate entities that we create, if we just let them run rampant and overpower us…it’s incredibly irresponsible.” In 2003 Grossman co-founded Daniel Pennock Democracy Schools, and in 2006 became director of education for the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund, and the two programs work together. The Democracy Schools are courses designed to teach people about the history regarding American laws and human struggles for self-governance. They examine the rise of corporate power in order to devise strategies for disrupting that power, and to return to communities democratic control of their own health and welfare. Grossman hopes to give activists a better way to achieve their goals, saying, “Out of this work are emerging creative community-based campaigns banning corporate assaults, and challenging hundreds of years of ‘well-bred’ law, legal theory and constitutional doctrines that have made We the People into zombies of the body politic.”


 

Truth: Medea Benjamin

Medea Benjamin 

Human Rights Advocate, Anti-War Activist, Author

(1952 –)

It is our responsibility as global citizens to learn to communicate with those we are taught to see as enemies. For it is only when we understand each other, love each other, and think of every man and woman as our brother and sister that we will finally be on our way to ending war.

 

Additional Quotes by Medea Benjamin

  • Changing the structure and rules of the global economy will require a mass movement based on messages of compassion, justice, and equality, as well as collaborative and democratic processes ... If we stay positive, inclusive, and democratic, we have a truly historic opportunity to build a global movement for social justice.
  •  When most Americans hear of human rights abuses, they likely think of atrocities in some far-off country in a forgotten corner of the globe. . . . [But] abuses against individuals' basic rights also occur regularly here in the United States, and our money-saturated political system hardly deserves the title 'democracy.
  • We who oppose war, and who now represent the majority of Americans, must force our representatives to represent us.

 

Biography

Medea Benjamin was born Susan Benjamin but in college changed her name to that of the Greek mythological woman. She has a Master’s Degree in both Public Health and Economics, and has spent over twenty years advocating for human rights all over the world. Benjamin spent ten years in Latin America and Africa as an economist and nutritionist for such organizations as the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization and the World Health Organization, and lived for five years in Cuba. She is the author of eight books, including Bridging the Global Gap: A Handbook to Linking Citizens of the First and Third Worlds (1989), and Greening of the Revolution: Cuba’s Experiment with Organic Agriculture (1995).

Benjamin and her husband Kevin Danaher co-founded Global Exchange, an organization dedicated to promoting “fair trade” practices, where environmental concerns and fair wages for the production of goods take precedence over corporate profits. She has fought against sweatshops, particularly in the garment and shoe industries, and with Global Exchange persuaded corporate giant Nike to investigate and monitor its overseas factories to ensure safe working environments and living wages. Global Exchange was also a prominent, key factor in organizing the protests against the World Trade Organization in Seattle in December 1999.

It was after the attacks on September 11, 2001, however, that Medea Benjamin’s activism took on a different tone and color – pink. She co-founded CODEPINK: Women for Peace in 2002. It’s a “women-run, women-led peace organization”, whose activities range from personal meetings with members of Congress to dressing in pink surgical scrubs handing out “prescriptions for peace.” Their approach is inventive, often playful, and always in pink, but their goal for peace is serious. Their acts of civil disobedience can be confrontational and often involve members being arrested, but this merely strengthens their resolve. Code Pink’s Members include prominent figures such as Ann Wright and Diane Wilson, but also “regular” women from all over the country, participating in at least 250 chapters. In 2006, Benjamin and Code Pink brought six Iraqi women (Sunni, Shiite, and Kurd) to the US for International Women’s Day to travel and lobby to end the war. She is co-editor of Code Pink’s 2006 book, Stop the Next War Now: Effective Responses to Violence and Terrorism. It’s a collection of essays from people such as Barbara Ehrenreich, Alice Walker, Helen Thomas, and Arianna Huffington.

Medea Benjamin has involved herself in the peace and justice process in a myriad of ways besides Global Exchange and Code Pink. In 2000, she ran for US Senate (for California) on the Green Party ticket. She helped to bring groups together to form the coalition United for Peace and Justice. She’s traveled to Iraq several times and assisted in establishing an occupation and watch center in Baghdad. In 2005, Benjamin was nominated to receive the Nobel Peace Prize as part of the project, “1000 Women for the Nobel Peace Prize 2005”, a collective nomination representing women who work for peace and human rights everywhere.

 

 

Truth: Studs Terkel

Louis ‘Studs’ Terkel

Social Historian, Lawyer, Actor, Author, Activist 
 
1912-2009

Perhaps it is this specter that most haunts working men and women: the planned obsolescence of people that is of a piece with the planned obsolescence of the things they make. Or sell. It is perhaps this fear of no longer being needed in a world of needless things that most clearly spells out the unnaturalness, the surreality of much that is called work today.

 

Additional Quotes by Studs Terkel

  • All the other books ask, 'What's it like?' What was World War II like for the young kid at Normandy, or what is work like for a woman having a job for the first time in her life? What's it like to be black or white?
  • But once you become active in something, something happens to you. You get excited and suddenly you realize you count.
  • Chicago is not the most corrupt American city. It's the most theatrically corrupt.
  • I always love to quote Albert Einstein because nobody dares contradict him.
  • I hope for peace and sanity - it's the same thing.
  • I hope that memory is valued - that we do not lose memory.
  • I think it's realistic to have hope. One can be a perverse idealist and say the easiest thing: 'I despair. The world's no good.' That's a perverse idealist. It's practical to hope, because the hope is for us to survive as a human species. That's very realistic.
  • I thought, if ever there were a time to write a book about hope, it's now.
  • I want a language that speaks the truth.
  • I want people to talk to one another no matter what their difference of opinion might be.
  • I want to praise activists through the years. I praise those of the past as well, to have them honored.
  • I want, of course, peace, grace, and beauty. How do you do that? You work for it.
  • I'm not up on the Internet, but I hear that is a democratic possibility. People can connect with each other. I think people are ready for something, but there is no leadership to offer it to them. People are ready to say, 'Yes, we are part of a world.'
  • I've always felt, in all my books, that there's a deep decency in the American people and a native intelligence - providing they have the facts, providing they have the information.
  • If solace is any sort of succor to someone, that is sufficient. I believe in the faith of people, whatever faith they may have.
  • Nonetheless, do I have respect for people who believe in the hereafter? Of course I do. I might add, perhaps even a touch of envy too, because of the solace.
  • People are ready to say, 'Yes, we are ready for single-payer health insurance.' We are the only industrialized country in the world that does not have national health insurance. We are the richest in wealth and the poorest in health of all the industrial nations.
  • Religion obviously played a role in this book and the previous book, too.
  • That's what we're missing. We're missing argument. We're missing debate. We're missing colloquy. We're missing all sorts of things. Instead, we're accepting.
  • That's why I wrote this book: to show how these people can imbue us with hope. I read somewhere that when a person takes part in community action, his health improves. Something happens to him or to her biologically. It's like a tonic.
  • We are the most powerful nation in the world, but we're not the only nation in the world. We are not the only people in the world. We are an important people, the wealthiest, the most powerful and, to a great extent, generous. But we are part of the world.
  • We use the word 'hope' perhaps more often than any other word in the vocabulary: 'I hope it's a nice day.' 'Hopefully, you're doing well.' 'So how are things going along? Pretty good. Going to be good tomorrow? Hope so.'
  • When you become part of something, in some way you count. It could be a march; it could be a rally, even a brief one. You're part of something, and you suddenly realize you count. To count is very important.
  • Why are we born? We're born eventually to die, of course. But what happens between the time we're born and we die? We're born to live. One is a realist if one hopes.
  • With optimism, you look upon the sunny side of things. People say, 'Studs, you're an optimist.' I never said I was an optimist. I have hope because what's the alternative to hope? Despair? If you have despair, you might as well put your head in the oven.
  • You happen to be talking to an agnostic. You know what an agnostic is? A cowardly atheist.

 

Biography

Despite his almost complete identification with the Windy City, Louis Terkel—universally called Studs—actually was born in New York City. His family moved west not long before he became a teenager, and settled on Chicago's West Side.

Since graduating from law school at the University of Chicago in 1934, Terkel has worked as a radio producer, jazz columnist, sportscaster, playwright, and civil service employee. He has appeared on stage, in radio soap operas, on television shows (including Ken Burns's documentaries Baseball, Jazz, and The Civil War) and in a handful of movies (most notably 1988's Eight Men Out).

He is famous as host of a series of radio and television shows in Chicago starting in 1944. His television career was disrupted when he was blacklisted in 1953 for speaking out in favor of price and rent controls, against the poll tax and Jim Crow laws, and for refusing to cooperate with the House Un-American Activities Committee. He continued on the radio, however, with a daily music and interview show, The Studs Terkel Program, which ran from 1952 until 1997.

Studs's nickname comes from the character Studs Lonigan created by James T. Farrell, one of his favorite writers. Terkel himself became an author in 1957 with Giants of Jazz, and since 1967 he has produced a dozen more books, mostly from edited interviews. These include Division Street: America, Hard Times, Working, Talking to Myself, Race, and The Good War, about World War II, which won the Pulitzer Prize in 1985.

Studs likes to call himself “a guerrilla journalist with a tape recorder.” More poetically, another writer calls him “the Walt Whitman of the radio waves.” He has been inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters and serves as distinguished scholar-in-residence at the Chicago Historical Society.

 

 

Eleanor Farejon

Margaret Elizabeth Sangster

Margaret Elizabeth Sangster  was born at New Rochelle, New York, February 22, 1838. Educated privately, chiefly in New York.

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