quotes

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: Rachel Corrie

Rachel Corrie
 
Activist, Writer
 
(1979–2003)

"The international media and our government are not going to tell us that we are effective, important, justified in our work, courageous, intelligent, valuable. We have to do that for each other, and one way we can do that is by continuing our work, visibly. People without privilege will be doing this work no matter what, because they are working for their lives. We can work with them, and they know that we work with them, or we can leave them to do this work themselves and curse us for our complicity in killing them.


Additional Quotes by Rachel Corrie

  • Follow your dreams, believe in yourself and don't give up.  I feel like I'm witnessing the systematic
  • Sometimes I sit down to dinner with people and I realize there is a massive military machine surrounding us, trying to kill the people I'm having dinner with. 
  • We are protecting civilians. We are unarmed. We are no threat to you. Please do not shoot. 
  • We should be inspired by people... who show that human beings can be kind, brave, generous, beautiful, strong-even in the most difficult circumstances. 

Biography

Rachel Corrie was a young activist whose life, at 23, ended abruptly on March 16, 2003 while she was working as a protester in the Gaza Strip. She grew up in Olympia, Washington, attending Capital High School and The Evergreen State College. While in college, Corrie joined the Olympia Movement for Justice and Peace, and later, the International Solidarity Movement, or ISM.

The ISM, founded in 2001, looks worldwide for people to help with their nonviolent protests against the Israeli military in the West Bank. The organization seeks to pressure Israel and its Israeli Defense Force (IDF) into stopping its occupation of Palestinian lands, using a number of nonviolent resistance tactics. Violating Israeli curfews imposed on Palestinian areas, removing roadblocks placed by the IDF to isolate one village from another, and blocking military vehicles like tanks and bulldozers are among the measures used to protest the occupation.

Rachel Corrie went to Rafah in the Gaza Strip in January 2003 and received two days of nonviolent resistance training to assist in ISM activities. She was horrified at the amount of destruction she found there. Homes were destroyed and people detained and killed on a daily basis. Rachel recorded what she observed and felt in letters and emails home to her family. In one email she wrote, “Now the Israeli army has actually dug up the road to Gaza, and both of the major checkpoints are closed. This means that Palestinians who want to go and register for their next quarter at university can’t. People can’t get to their jobs and those who are trapped on the other side can’t get home; and internationals, who have a meeting tomorrow in the West Bank, won’t make it.” Yet through all of this, she found that her presence was welcome, as when she wrote, “Just feel sick to my stomach a lot from being doted on all the time, very sweetly, by people who are facing doom….Honestly, a lot of the time the sheer kindness of the people here, coupled with the overwhelming evidence of the willful destruction of their lives, makes it seem unreal to me.”

Rachel Corrie’s efforts to help the resistance movement cost her her life on March 16, 2003. She had placed herself between a Caterpillar bulldozer and a local home, trying to prevent the IDF from demolishing it. She was run over twice by the vehicle and killed.

The outcry from her tragedy has manifested in many ways. A memorial website has been set up to commemorate her life, as well as The Rachel Corrie Foundation for Peace and Justice. Several music artists have paid tribute to Corrie in songs and compositions. Actor Alan Rickman and writer Katherine Viner put together a play based on Corrie’s letters, journals, and emails called “My Name is Rachel Corrie.” It played in London in 2005, and after an initial postponement in the US, had a limited run Off-Broadway in New York.

 

Truth: Dennis Kucinich


Dennis Kucinich 

US Congressman, Former Candidate for President 

 (1946 -  )

Mr. Speaker, we make war with such certainty, yet we are befuddled how to create peace. This paradox requires reflection if we are to survive. Making and endorsing war requires a secret love of death, and a fearful desire to embrace annihilation. Creating peace requires compassion, putting ourselves in the other person's place, and all of their suffering and all of their hopes and to act from our heart's capacity to love, not fear.

 

Additional Quotes by Dennis Kucinich

  • I am running for President of the United States to enable the Goddess of Peace to encircle within her arms all the children of this country and all the children of the world. 
  • I believe health care is a civil right. 
  • I believe sincerely that we should bring in U.N. peacekeepers and bring our troops home. 
  • I don't want to bash Bill and Hillary, because they're friends of mine, but I do have a difference of opinion about how to take back the House and the Senate. 
  • I have worked to expand the health care debate beyond the current for-profit system, to include a public option and an amendment to free the states to pursue single payer. 
  • I think it's inconsistent to tell the American people that you oppose the war and, yet, you continue to vote to fund the war. Because every time you vote to fund the war, you're reauthorizing the war all over again. 
  • I think we need to look for any opening we can to avoid a war and we shouldn't pass up any opportunity for resolution. 
  •  In the past week it has become clear that the vote on the final healthcare bill will be very close. I take this vote with the utmost seriousness. I am quite aware of the historic fight that has lasted the better part of the last century to bring America in line with other modern democracies in providing single payer health care.  
  •  Iraq does not pose an imminent threat to the United States of any of its neighboring nations. 
  • The tax code is not the only area where the administration is helping the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. It has spent $155 billion for an unnecessary war driven by fear. 
  • This is a struggle for the soul of the Democratic Party, which in too many cases has become so corporate and identified with corporate interests that you can't tell the difference between Democrats and Republicans.  
  • Today we're faced with over 500 casualties, a cost of over $200 billion. And it could rise - the casualties could go into thousands and the cost could go over half a trillion - if we stay there for years. 
  • War can be so impersonal yet when we put a name, a face, a place and match it to families, then war is not impersonal. 
  • We have weapons of mass destruction we have to address here at home. Poverty is a weapon of mass destruction. Homelessness is a weapon of mass destruction. Unemployment is a weapon of mass destruction. 

Biography

Dennis Kucinich, Democratic Congressman from Ohio and two-time candidate for President lives his life as an advocate for peace and a greener, healthier world. That he has carved out a successful political career holding true to these values is a remarkable achievement.

Kucinich’s early life and career were lessons in persistence and hard work. He grew up in a large family that was constantly on the move for affordable housing, even occasionally forced to live out of their car. He worked his way through the schools he attended, and began his political aspirations by running for Cleveland city council while still in college. He moved from that position to mayor in 1977, becoming Cleveland’s youngest mayor at age 31. His term was very controversial. Kucinich refused to sell the city’s publicly-owned company, Muny Light, a decision so unpopular at the time that a contract was taken out on his life. It was years later before the city recognized that Kucinich, in standing up to the banks and big business, had in fact made the right decision. By then, Kucinich had spent the 1980s as a political pariah. Wanting to continue serving the public, he began his political career over, starting again as city councilman, then moving to the State Senate, and finally to the US House of Representatives in 1996. He remains in office today after making two bids for the Presidency in 2004 and 2008.

As a Representative, Dennis Kucinich makes a point of knowing his constituency and working on their behalf, without giving in to corporate interests. He supports a liberal and environmental agenda. He voted against the NAFTA agreement, the Patriot Act, the 2003 invasion into Iraq, and advocates a withdrawal of troops there. He supports gay rights, including same-sex marriage, and a universal health care system. Kucinich would also have the US government sign the Kyoto Protocol and address global warming and other conservation issues.

These ideas are part of the philosophy by which Dennis Kucinich lives his life, and he brought these beliefs to his two bids for the presidency. His platform included creating a Department of Peace, as when he said, “I’m going to let the rest of the world know that the days of America trying to be a nation above nations is over. We have to quit trying to dominate other countries, and we have to step out of our isolation and into the brotherhood and sisterhood of all people…. We have to be ready to take the lead, but we need to have harmony with other nations.” His firm belief in peace as an integral part of life earned him the Gandhi Peace Award in 2003. His platform also included leading the US into becoming greener and more sustainable, without dependence on coal or oil. As a candidate, Kucinich said, “One of my proposals is to have millions of homes with wind and solar technologies… the role of utilities will change dramatically because it’s not going to be a centralized approach to energy production…. I want to see, eventually, all the homes in this country have the option of that technology. In turn, you can create millions of jobs building alternative technologies.”

Dennis Kucinich left the presidential race in January 2008, and was re-elected to office. His ideas of how government can best serve the people do not always follow Party lines; often he stands alone, as when he proposed articles in 2007 to impeach Vice President Dick Cheney, charging him with misleading America into war. He keeps a small copy of the Constitution with him at all times, to remind himself and Congress of their commitment to upholding its principles. In June 2008, Kucinich presented 35 articles of impeachment to Congress; one month later, realizing that number was too large to deal with at once, he introduced a single article to impeach President Bush for “Deceiving Congress with Fabricated Threats of Iraq WMDs to Fraudulently Obtain Support for an Authorization of the Use of Military Force Against Iraq.” 

The heart of the matter, for Dennis Kucinich, is believing that “peace means being in harmony with nature.” It shapes his life and his work for a greener and more socially just America.


Truth: Pete Seeger


Pete Seeger 

Singer/Songwriter, Activist

(1919–  )

Song, songs kept them going and going;/  They didn't realize the millions of seeds they were sowing./ They were singing in marches, even singing in jail./ Songs gave them the courage to believe they would not fail.

 

Additional Quotes by Pete Seeger

  • Do you know the difference between education and experience? Education is when you read the fine print; experience is what you get when you don't. 
  •  Down through the centuries, this trick has been tried by various establishments throughout the world. They force people to get involved in the kind of examination that has only one aim and that is to stamp out dissent. 
  •  Education is when you read the fine print; experience is what you get when you don't. 
  •  Historically, I believe I was correct in refusing to answer their questions.  
  •  I am not going to answer any questions as to my association, my philosophical or religious beliefs or my political beliefs, or how I voted in any election, or any of these private affairs. 
  •  I am saying voluntarily that I have sung for almost every religious group in the country, from Jewish and Catholic, and Presbyterian and Holy Rollers and Revival Churches. 
  •  I believe that my choosing my present course I do no dishonor to them, or to those who may come after me. 
  •  I decline to discuss, under compulsion, where I have sung, and who has sung my songs, and who else has sung with me, and the people I have known.
  •  I feel that my whole life is a contribution.
  •  I fought for peace in the fifties. 
  •  I have sung in hobo jungles, and I have sung for the Rockefellers, and I am proud that I have never refused to sing for anybody.  
  • I love my country very dearly, and I greatly resent the implication that some of the places that I have sung and some of the people that I have known, and some of my opinions, whether they are religious or philosophical, make me less of an American. 
  •  I want to turn the clock back to when people lived in small villages and took care of each other. 
  • One of the things I'm most proud of about my country is the fact that we did lick McCarthyism back in the fifties.

 

Biography

Music is synonymous with Pete Seeger, from his family heritage to his career and political activism. His parents, Charles and Constance, musicologist and musician respectively, both taught classical music at Juilliard. His stepmother Ruth Seeger was a composer. His half siblings Mike and Peggy are both musicians, and Pete has often performed with his grandson Tao, a member of the band TheMammals.

Seeger’s love affair with folk music and the banjo began at a Folk Festival he attended when he was sixteen. That love has informed his career and his activism. After two years of study at Harvard, he left to travel around the country, singing and mastering his craft. In 1940, Seeger met Woody Guthrie and they later formed the group the Almanac Singers. This group combined folk music with activism forthe labor movement. In 1942, he entered the Army, but spent much of his service time entertaining the soldiers by playing and singing. Once discharged in 1945, Seegerfounded People’s Song, a musicians’ union combining folk music with the labor movement. He even took to thecampaign trail in 1948 with his music, traveling with Progressive Party Presidential candidate Henry Wallace.

That year he also founded The Weavers, a band which found a good deal of mainstream success until Seeger’s ties to theCommunist Party (he was a member from 1942–1950) caused the group to be blacklisted. He was subpoenaed beforethe House Un-American Activities Committee in 1955 for those affiliations. Instead of invoking the Fifth Amendment as many others had before him, Seeger took the unique stand of declaring that it was a violation of his First Amendment rights of free speech and associations to be asked these questions by the Committee. In 1961, he was cited for and found guilty of contempt, resulting in a prison sentence which was later overturned.

Seeger draws on diverse kinds of music to create his songs, from African melodies to spirituals, and even takes passages from the Bible for songs such as “Turn, Turn, Turn.” His words cover many subjects from supporting labor to protesting war and advocating peace. His seemingly simplistic folk music and ideas have touched the lives of people all over the world, garnering him a huge fan base and influencing many artists such as Bruce Springsteen, who in 2006 released a tribute album to Seeger called We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions. In 2007 a documentary of his life came out entitled Pete Seeger: The Power of Song.

Pete Seeger’s music and activism goes further than playing concerts and producing albums. He wrote a book, How to Playthe Five-String Banjo, to teach others about his beloved instrument. He hosted a folk music show in the 1960’s called Rainbow Quest featuring other folk music singers. He foundedSing Out!, a magazine dedicated to folk music. He also launched a project in the 1960’s to call attention to thepollution in the Hudson River. He built the sloop Clearwater to sail the Hudson and work toward cleaning it up. Theorganization also hosts festivals to address environmental problems not only on the Hudson but elsewhere in the world.

 

 

Truth: William Rivers Pitt

 

 

William Rivers Pitt 

Writer, educator, journalist

 (1971-  )

Why so much war? Because war is a profitable enterprise. George W. Bush and his people can hold forth about the wonders of democracy and peace, and can condemn worldwide violence in solemn tones.  Until the United States stops being the world's largest arms dealer, these words from our government absolutely reek of hypocrisy.

 

Biography

Pitt was born in Washington, D.C., and lived several years in Alabama (where his father, Charles Redding Pitt, served as chair of the state Democratic Party) before eventually moving to Boston. He was educated in English literature at Holy Cross College, a Catholic college in Massachusetts, and after graduation spent two years in San Francisco doing law-related work. Formerly, Pitt taught English literature, journalism, grammar and history at a small private school outside Boston. He set aside teaching in 2003 and became a full-time professional writer.

Pitt had been writing about politics off and on for several years, but became devoted to the practice during the impeachment trial of former President Bill Clinton. Since President George W. Bush took office on January 20, 2001, Pitt has worked to fight what he describes as "the rising tide of conservative fundamentalism in American government".

In 2002, Pitt wrote the book War on Iraq: What Team Bush Doesn't Want You to Know which consisted of an in-depth interview with former United Nations weapons inspector Scott Ritter. In it, Pitt and Ritter examine the Bush administration's justifications for war with Iraq and call for a diplomatic solution instead of war. In reviewing this book, The Guardian called it "the most comprehensive independent analysis of the state of knowledge about Iraq's weapons programs until the new team of inspectors went back."

Pitt has worked as the managing editor at the liberal commentary website truthout.org.

In January 2004, Pitt took over for David Swanson as the Press Secretary for Dennis Kucinich, who was seeking the Democratic Party's nomination in the 2004 presidential election.

Following his involvement in the Kucinich campaign, Pitt decided to push his career in teaching to the side in order to focus on political activism.  As a result, he joined the staff of Progressive Democrats of America in 2005 as their Editorial director.

 

 

Truth: Ray McGovern

 

Ray McGovern Biography

Retired CIA Officer, Political Activist

(1939- )

Allegations keep cropping up in the press that CIA alumni are undermining the Bush/Cheney administration. In at least one sense, I suppose, this is true. For when an administration embarks on a war justified by little or no intelligence, speaking the truth can be regarded as treachery. The country could use more of that kind of "treachery."

 

Additional Quotes by Ray McGovern

  • When the emperor has no clothes you have to have the presence of mind, and courage, to stand up and say 'the emperor has no clothes'
  • Many former colleagues and successors are facing a dilemma all too familiar to intelligence veterans - the difficult choices that must be faced when the demands of good conscience butt up against deeply ingrained attitudes concerning secrecy, misguided notions of what is true patriotism, and understandable reluctance to put careers - and mortgages - on the line ... We appeal to those still working inside the Intelligence Community to consider turning state's evidence.
  • In times like this we must be careful to keep our bearings, lest we come to love the chaos that passes for reality.
  •  THAT false “reality” has lost its power, because it cannot live in the light of truth.
  •  You shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free.” THAT is the rock-solid truth.
  •  I noticed that this Bible verse was chiseled into the marble wall of CIA Headquarters when I began working as an analyst there in April 1963. That was the same month that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. penned a “Letter From the Birmingham City Jail,” including graphic, earthy words in describing our duty to expose deceit and injustice.
Biography

Ray McGovern is an activist who writes and lectures all over the country, addressing issues such as war and the CIA. He holds degrees including an M.A. in Russian Studies from Fordham University, a certificate in Theological Studies from Georgetown University, and is a graduate of Harvard Business School’s Advanced Management Program. His criticism of the Pope’s position on women as priests in 1996 first brought McGovern to the attention of the media, but it is in his analysis of the war in Iraq, and of the CIA’s role in bringing the war about, that McGovern is such a strong anti-war voice.

“Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” Those words are carved into the marble facade of the entrance to the CIA, and is the credo by which Ray McGovern worked during his 27- year career as an analyst there. His intelligence work began during his service in the US Army, and continued in the CIA, where he worked for seven presidents, beginning with President Kennedy and ending with President George Bush. McGovern understood the inscription as meaning, “the primary function of the Central Intelligence Agency is to seek the truth…and to be able to report that truth without fear or favor.” As an analyst on foreign policy, McGovern would synthesize material given to him on a daily basis, and then brief senior White House advisers with his conclusions. Now retired, McGovern is proud of the fact that he had the power to report his findings “without fear or favor” to the politicians. He gave his policy advice as he found it in these briefings, and was supported in his job by his superiors.

Now, as a co-founder of Veterans Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS), started in 2003, McGovern is speaking out against what he sees as corruption in the CIA, a bending of its integrity to the will of President George W. Bush and his White House officials. He asserts that the war in Iraq was manufactured and sold to the United States under false pretenses – the real reason being oil. In a 2007 letter to former CIA Director George Tenet (sent through Tenet’s publisher), McGovern and other former intelligence officers call Tenet onto the carpet for signing documents he knew to be fraudulent (that Iraq was buying uranium from Africa), and for testifying that Iraq had links to Al- Qaeda, when actual intelligence reports found no link between Iraq and Osama bin Laden. In short, they accuse Tenet of “dovetailing” intelligence to fit in with what politicians wanted to hear in the push for an unnecessary war with Iraq. On a personal level, McGovern sees the damage done to the image of, and faith in, intelligence work as profound and taking years to correct. He hopes to see the CIA become again an entity independent from any political administration.

Now, as White House eyes look toward an attack on Iran to stop its apparent development in nuclear capabilities, McGovern is raising concerns over just why an attack is necessary, and is critical of the Bush regime. He writes, “The very same men who…brought us the war in Iraq are now focusing on Iran, which they view as the only remaining obstacle to American domination of the entire oil-rich Middle East.” He also calls for impeachment of President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney on a number of charges, but for one that will really stand and hold, he suggests, “Why not focus on a high crime that the Bush administration has already admitted to, with claims it is above the law and the Constitution: electronic eavesdropping on Americans without the required court warrant.” With the precedent set with Richard Nixon, McGovern feels it is a clear way to bring some beginning of justice to the American people.


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: Hugh Thompson, Jr.


Hugh Thompson, Jr. 

Helicopter pilot

(1943–2006)

My Lai ...was no accident whatsoever. Pure, premeditated murder. ...Are we too big to apologize?

 

Additional Quotes by Hugh Thompson, Jr.

  • Don't do the right thing looking for a reward, because it might not come.
  •  Something terrible happened here 30 years ago today. I cannot explain why it happened. I just wish our crew that day could have helped more people than we did.
  •  I'd received death threats over the phone. Dead animals on your porch, mutilated animals on your porch some mornings when you get up. So I was not a 'good guy'.
  •  These people were looking at me for help and there was no way I could turn my back on them
  •  They said I was screaming quite loud. I threatened never to fly again. I didn't want to be a part of that. It wasn't war.
Biography

On the morning of March 16, 1968, Chief Warrant Officer Hugh Thompson was flying reconnaissance over “Pinkville,” where intelligence said Viet Cong were hiding. While he drew no fire to indicate that the enemy was present, each pass made Thompson more aware that something was terribly wrong on the ground.

Today Pinkville’s Vietnamese name, My Lai, is synonymous with tragedy and American shame. When Thompson realized that U.S. soldiers were slaughtering civilians that day, he blocked them with his helicopter, had his crew train machine guns on the American troops, and rescued a group of villagers hiding in a bunker. He landed again when he saw motion in a drainage ditch full of bodies, and crew chief Glenn Andreotta, waded in to rescue a young boy, unhurt but covered with the blood of others. Thompson then reported the My Lai massacre to his Army officers, leading to a cease-fire order. An elaborate cover-up ensued.

By the time the Pentagon began a high-level inquiry, Thompson had managed to put the horrific day out of mind. Like his father, he had served in the U.S. Navy as well as the Army, and he condemned neither the military nor the war. Still, he was surprised and bitter when he was reviled for his role at My Lai. L. Mendal Rivers, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, claimed that Thompson was the only guilty one there, since he had threatened to shoot American troops.

Thompson remained in combat until he was shot down for the fifth time and broke his back, and then he returned to the States to train helicopter pilots. Later, he flew for oil companies and eventually worked for the Louisiana Department of Veteran Affairs, speaking widely about his experience at My Lai.

In 1998, a nine-year letter-writing campaign started by a university professor finally brought Thompson the Soldier’s Medal for heroism not involving conflict with an enemy. He refused to accept the award unless it also was given to his door gunner, Lawrence Colburn, and posthumously to Andreotta, who was killed in a crash three weeks after My Lai.

Ten days after receiving the Soldier’s Medal at the Vietnam Memorial, Thompson and Colburn attended a service at My Lai marking the thirtieth anniversary of the massacre. Thompson was stunned when a Vietnamese woman wished aloud that those who had shot at them had attended so that they could forgive them.—something he said he could never do.

Later that year, Thompson said Americans need to select leaders very carefully. “We need some negotiators first and fighters second,” he told CNN.

Thompson threw away the Distinguished Flying Cross he was awarded for saving the lives of Vietnamese civilians “in the face of hostile enemy fire.” The citation didn’t mention that the hostile fire was from the American side, and Thompson felt his commanding officers were trying to buy his silence.



Truth: Ann Wright

Ann Wright 

Army Colonel, Foreign Diplomat, Anti-War Activist, Peace Advocate

(1946 -  )

I have served my country for almost thirty years in some of the most isolated and dangerous parts of the world. I want to continue to serve America. However, I do not believe in the policies of this Administration and cannot --- morally and professionally --- defend or implement them. It is with heavy heart that I must end my service to America and therefore resign.

Biography

Patriotism can manifest in many forms, and has for Mary Ann Wright. She has been a career military woman, a State Department diplomat, and for the past few years an influential spokesperson in the anti-war movement. Ann Wright grew up in Bentonville, Arkansas, and attended the University of Arkansas, where she holds a Master’s and a Law Degree. She also has a Master’s Degree in National Security Affairs from the US Naval War College. In her junior year at the University of Arkansas, she attended a three-week Army training program after meeting with a visiting Army recruiter. That experience helped inform her decision to join the service.

There she would remain for 13 years in active duty, with another 16 years in the Army reserves, retiring as a Colonel. Ironically, part of her work was special operations in civil affairs, in the event of troop invasions into countries like Iraq. Ann helped to develop, as she explained, “plans about how you interact with the civilian population, how you protect the facilities – sewage, water, electrical grids, libraries…It’s our obligation under the law of land warfare.” Ann requested a release from active duty from the Army and joined the State Department. For the next 16 years, she served as a foreign diplomat in countries such as Nicaragua, Somalia, Uzbekistan, and Sierra Leone. She was on the team that reopened the US Embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan in December, 2001, after the fall of the Taliban to US forces.

In all those years, Ann Wright was proud of her representation of America. However, on March 13, 2003, the eve of the US invasion of Iraq, Col.. Ann Wright sent a letter of resignation to then Secretary of State Colin Powell. She felt that without the authorization of the UN Security Council, the US invasion and occupation of a Moslem, Arab oil-rich country would be a disaster. Only two other State Department officials resigned at that time over the imminent invasion. In an interview, Ann explained that, in Foreign Service, “Your job is to implement the policies of an administration…if you strongly disagree with any administration’s policies, and wish to speak out, your only option is to resign. I understood that and that’s one of the reasons I resigned – to give myself the freedom to talk out.”

Talk out she has. Since resigning, patriotism for Ann Wright has been as an anti-war activist. She worked with Cindy Sheehan organizing Camp Casey, and appeared in the documentary “Uncovered: The Truth About the Iraq War”. She travels and lectures on foreign policy issues. She has been arrested five times in the past year for protesting Bush’s policies, and has referred to herself cheerfully as a “felon for peace”. This retired Army Colonel has also recently been temporarily banned not only from two military bases for placing postcards there about a showing of the documentary “Sir, No Sir”, but from the US Capitol area (her case is still pending), and the National Press Club (this a lifetime ban), for voicing opinions and questions concerning Bush’s policies and the Iraq war.


Truth: Peter Davis

 

Peter Davis 

Filmmaker, Journalist, Writer

(1937-  )

After the invasion of Iraq, I again heard from Vietnamese the excuse that Americans were good people who happened to have bad leaders. I wondered how long we can get away with that one. My fear is that we are no longer a nation at war but have become a nation of war. My hope is that we will pull back from empire and once again embrace our republic.

 

Additional Quotes by Peter Davis

  • If the first casualty of war is truth, the last is memory.
  •  I looked at all kinds of films, and I did every kind of research you can imagine, talking, reading books, watching other films and then most of all thinking. I was able really to think about what I felt, how to express it and I did a lot of worrying. On all the films I've made I have never celebrated after a day of shooting. I start worrying and after shooting, no matter how good it is, I always think 'well jeez, sorry we did that' but what didn't we get, what do we still have to get while we're here or in this situation or at this school or in this firehouse, wherever I happen to be filming.
  • Always worry, that's just advice to a filmmaker.  I never feel reassured until the film is over, mixed and released.  Reassurance is not something that I as a filmmaker have felt or as a writer, until the whole thing is over.

Biography

Peter Davis was born in Santa Monica, California, where his parents were screenwriters. Best known for Hearts and Minds (1974), his landmark documentary film on the Vietnam War, Davis examines American life from the standpoint of a participant/observer having a lover’s quarrel with what he’s witnessing. He believes in an adversarial relationship between the press and authority and wants to hold power up to scrutiny as a way of preventing tyranny.

After graduating from Harvard, Davis went to India and became acquainted with both its incomparable beauty and extreme poverty. When he returned to the United States, he began examining his own country as a journalist. Davis realized that while dire poverty in India was a human tragedy, in the richest nation in the world it is a moral and political scandal.

Davis worked briefly at The New York Times and then was chosen to research and interview Franklin D. Roosevelt’s enemies, political associates, and family for a television series on FDR. This post-graduate education in contemporary American history brought him into the documentary film world as well as into contact with the injustices and unfulfilled promises in American society. At CBS News in the late 1960s and ’70s, Davis made films on student rebellion, poverty, racism, mental illness, and war. His investigation into Defense Department propaganda began a conflict between the Nixon Administration and broadcast journalism that led to reforms in the Pentagon’s public relations apparatus.

Leaving CBS News in 1972, Davis made Hearts and Minds, which unflinchingly examines American involvement in Vietnam. The film won the 1975 Academy Award for feature documentary and was re-released as a classic film on its 30th anniversary in 2004.

Davis began writing nonfiction articles and books in the late 1970s. He is the author of Hometown (1982), a study of life in a Midwestern community;Where is Nicaragua? (1987), which examines the impact of American policy in Central America during the Reagan Administration; and the Pulitzer Prize-nominated If You Came This Way (1995), a chronicle of the American underclass. With his son Nick Davis, he made JACK, a film biography of President Kennedy, in 1993. Davis’s many awards include an Emmy, a Peabody, a George Polk, and the Prix Sadoul in France. He is an Associate Fellow of Calhoun College at Yale.

 


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