FreeThinker founder Debbie Boen created this striking Obama signs for the Nov. 4 election.

As I was driving to the Icehouse café on Tuesday night, NPR (National Public Radio) said something about declaring Obama and I didn’t get what had happened.  I walked into the cafe and everyone was watching the big screen TV.  There was a screaming crowd on the TV set.  The scream of happiness from the TV crowd of thousands didn’t stop and seemed to shake the earth.  I swear I could feel the vibration of it come from the earth into my body.  Miranda Herrick ran up to me and said, “Did you hear what just happened?  Obama is declared a winner!  Why are we NOT screaming?  Why are we NOT screaming?”  and with that we both started screaming and again and again.

Hugs.  Screaming.  Jumping up and down.  Tears.  Stacy Smith Segovia took a picture of me being excited.  I realized that this was personal history:  me feeling truly excited.

Gikuyu and I talked.  I forgot how to feel exhilaration, I said.  It’s so unfamiliar.  Brandt Hardin sat down with tears in his eyes.  Each of them had a respect for me and the work I had been doing for several years.  Miranda had given me the place to hold the first meeting of the Freethinkers (for peace and civil liberties).  Gikuyu and Brandt put together the Tour of Wurdz and used it to give people their voices of dissent.  Brandt’s political art show Tuesday night at the Icehouse was made on the pages of the tiny Bill of Rights that I had given him.  (do go see it!)

Last night seemed like a first time I had dared to feel.  For the last four to six years my life has been riding on a horrible dread that I had to push down in order to function.  The happiness I felt had been forced.  I hadn’t been all the way HERE.  Finding humor had to be rediscovered.  Finding the good in things had become a destiny for personal health and for the health of the community.  Being a part of Clarksville Online had become a most valuable and commendable asset to our community in that line.

Maybe instead of getting all worked up, I should have chosen to be “dumb and happy,” as my father-in-law likes to say.  But when those planes flew into the towers my husband and I thought, “Oh no.  What is he (Bush) going to use this to do?”

When my daughter got married, I was happy for her but secretly hoping that she would not bring children into this future.  When we celebrated holidays, it was a forced happiness for me.  I can’t say everything was phony because some of my richest experiences were about the dissention we were able to cause and the celebrations we had despite oppression.  I’m going to say that the bad things this country has been doing is yet to be exposed.  The stuff we already know is nothing compared to what is hidden.  We were lucky to have had the torture and such exposed.  It always interests me how bad it had gotten and how many still did nothing and how many still supported it.  How low does it have to get to really shock some into action?

Candlelight Vigil at the Eternal Flame

Knowledge is power although we each had to struggle with our own feelings of dread related to it and how much action we could take in the face of that dread.  Most of us are bound to not go down being stupid.  The events the Freethinkers did run, vigils and protests, had a double purpose of dissension and also of moving our bodies.  Taking one step, one honk, one appearance to a function that puts motion into the body again.  Move.  Despite.  Opposition.  We made ourselves find a forced feeling of safety when we felt threatened to shut up.  It was too much like the Nazi’s and I think you know that.  Having our neighbors threaten us.  Having our neighbors dehumanize us for disagreeing.  Having no media.

Our country had taken a wrong path at the crossroads.  Like someone who chooses crime as a path, if you go down the wrong path too long it can become impossible to turn back.  You get caught, get thrown in jail.  Your bad record gets created and the hole gets deeper and harder to climb out of.  This wrong path could have been continued but instead we, as a country, chose to turn around and go back.  Go back to the crossroads and chose a different path.  A path of decency instead of war and bullying.  Maybe it was necessary to experience the wrong path for awhile.  How many thousands died because of it.  It was a scary wrong path.  Like the other wrong paths we try not to think about:  the genocides of Native Americans, of women during the witch trials, the Jews, the Crusades and so many more.

So thanks to America for not being happy in lower states of fear and bullyness.  You demand better.  Several of the folks who got the tally at different Clarksville voting precincts found that Obama lost to McCain by only a few votes.  I’m sure he did really well in Nashville.  That is success!

Last night I was very happy to be with others who saw Michael Moore in Nashville just before the election of 2004.  We’ve all had this core feeling of dissent since that event.  The Michael Moore fireball really woke me up to what action is possible.  After the election of 2004 several of us put together the Clarksville Freethinkers for Peace and Civil Liberties.  I gave workshops on understanding apathy and moving through the emotions up to positive anger.  I bought mini Bill of Rights books to hand out.  Mary Alice and I started a newsletter.  We held meetings at the library.  Held weekly vigils in public square about the war for a year.  Joined in MoveOn efforts.  Several people wrote letters to the editor of the Leaf (Chronicle).  Joined Gathering to Save our Democracy in their attempts to get verifiable elections in Tenn.  Went to Democrat meetings.  Went to war protests in Nashville. Went to civil rights meetings.  Made signs.  Made art.  Sat at the parks with statistics of the war signs.  Turned our backs on the Bush motorcade when it passed through Kentucky.  Did this when the Democrat Party and most of the country acted frozen.

Some of the many others who inspired me were:

• My grandfather and the one time I heard him tell a friend how Hitler destroyed his opposition.  Grandpa loved this country more than anyone I know and he showed me that I still had the power and necessity to do something now, before it’s too late.
  

  Boen lights a candle at the Eternal Flame

• Bernie Ellis and Gathering to Save our Democracy for speaking the truth and doing something about election fraud.  By the next major election, Tennessee will have verifiable voting machines.
• Cindy Sheehan, a warrior just like us, who was determined to bring Bush down and did it when she broke through the main stream media wall.
• Chris Lugo who put together and reported on peaceful dissention to the war.
• Christine Pieysk who turned a breeze into a flurry of powerful action and words.
• Bill Larson who created ClarksvilleOnLine; what a gift to our city and to our voices!
• Civil Liberty leaders Terry and Wanda McMoore.
• Turner McCullough.  David Shelton.  Blayne Clement and Kim.  Tom Payne.  Beth and Faith Robinson.  Jill Eichhorn.
• Sarah of Boulder.  David Boen.  Randall Boen.  Alma Sanford.  Miyo and Jordi Kachi.  Nancy and Daren.  Gerry Gilman (go, go, go!).  Deborah Bowles.  Kitty.  Beverly.  Barry, Ted and Hannah Kitterman.  Tracy Diven.  Leslie Pierce. Gregg Schlanger (creator of the Eternal Flame monument, “Pillar of Clouds, Pillar of Fire”).
• MoveOn.org who united this country.
• The web which did the real reporting. So many others!

Others who inspired life:  Annette Cunningham, UU Clarksville, APSU, ARTZ and Gabriele and Bob Wardeiner, Tom Thayer and John McDonald of the Roxy Regional Theatre, Downtown Artist’s Co-op, NYC, Silke’s, The Looking Glass, Tandoor, Suva and Jack Bastin.

I feel like I have awoke from a nightmare.  Am I all the way awake yet?  Will I remember just how bad it got?  Will I learn?

Before the next step I feel the need to really, really celebrate.

This is not an ending but a (difficult) climbing out of the hole and creating a new beginning.  Time to put on a different pair of shoes.

Again I thank Clarksville Online for being 3 steps ahead in that game.

Thanks to you for being on (this mailing list).  In connection there is definite power.

With a majority vote censuring Freedom of Speech, Congress today smacked down the voices of hundreds of thousands of Americans who are simply saying “we want a drawdown; we want our troops home.” In other words, Americans who want to bring an end to the Iraq War.

Congress did it in the guise of patriotism, but this smackdown was also a blow to the very soldiers who are, according to these same officials, fighting for Democratic/Bill of Rights issues — such as free speech — in Iraq. In the U.S. Senate, a majority of our duly elected Senators, apparently with no more pressing issues to debate, voted on a Republican-sponsored symbolic resolution against MoveOn.org and their widely circulated anti-Petraeus ad that was printed as the general was testifying before Congress about the status of the Iraq War on the anniversary of Sept. 11.

The Senators, with Hilary Clinton and Christopher Dodd among the 25 refusing to join the censure, passed a resolution stating that Petraeus “deserves the full support of the Senate” and the Senate “strongly condemn(s) personal attacks on the honor and integrity of General Petraeus and all members of the United States Armed Forces.”

“Yesterday, they couldn’t even pass a bill to give soldiers adequate leave with their families before redeploying. But they’re spending time cracking down on a newspaper ad?” – MoveOn.org

Questioning Petraeus and the Bush war machine, as MoveOn.org had the guts and the tactical brilliance to do, is not slamming our troops. It slammed Bush domination of everything related to Iraq. Unfortunately, when it comes to Iraq, Petraeus is the man in the driver’s seat, pushing that machine through the Iraq landscape.

But this isn’t just about MoveOn.org’s New York Times ad. It’s not about peace activists not supporting the troops either. Because that in itself is a lie. We [anti-war activists and peace mongers] love our troops. We are just fed up with administrative mechanizations that are keeping them mired in an increasingly untenable, endless war that will result in years of occupation.

In case you don’t get it, they are talking about us. Not just the big guys like MoveOn.org. And no, not just the smaller sites such as Clarksville Online that include both voices of dissent and opposing responses to those dissenting voices, or groups like Veterans for Peace or United for Peace and Justice or FreeThinkers for Peace and Civil Liberties. They are talking about shutting up ordinary Americans, turning off our voices, intimidating us into silence. They just happened to fall on a really big target in the form of MoveOn.org.

The reality is that they are talking about citizens like you and me, everyday people who live in small cities like Clarksville, and communities like Oak Grove, Kentucky, or Ashland City, or Paris, Tennessee. And if you think that this action doesn’t affect you because you aren’t a voice of opposition, or are simply ambivalent on this issue, or don’t want to be involved, think again.

Sooner or later it will be your turn. Because once the precedents are set, once the censures are in place and deemed an acceptable response to what people don’t want to hear, once the Bill of Rights has been set upon and trod down into the dirt (it’s more than halfway there now) with a bi-partisan Congress jumping up and down on it to snap its neck and paralyze its intent, it will be too late. Barring another American Revolution, we will have to live with such follies foisted upon us by the men and women we elected (or didn’t elect) to represent us — and that includes the President.

Click here to view the embedded video.

It started on September 11 with the Senate hearings, testimony by General David Petraeus, and a controversial ad by MoveOn.org that referred to him as General Betray Us; the controversy over the ad content made all the major papers worldwide and garnered a lot of instant replay. And while I think that underneath that cultivated appearance of truth and some token gestures that mean “let’s revisit this in ‘08″ or better yet, leave it to the next president to clean up, I’m not sure I would have slapped Petraeus down that hard. I might have saved my smack-down KO punch, prioritized it for the top dogs in the White House I didn’t vote for and the candidates I did vote for who are not living up to my expectations and their campaign rhetoric.

The Senate testimony with Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker was scheduled for maximum effect, overlapping the 9-11 memorial services — an American tragedy revisited, a tragedy orchestrated by Bin Laden (not Saddam) and including quite a few Saudis — but wait, they have oil and are friends of the White House; can’t alienate them. If they got mad and shut off our oil supplies we might have to ride bikes more often, walk a bit farther, get healthier, build a few more sidewalks, use expanded public transit systems, nurture alternative fuels and — oh yes — make a dent in oil profits.

But I digress.

MoveOn.org made the front page with that Betray-Us ad; it made front pages world wide. So did today’s resolution on censure, but I don’t think it’s going quite the way Congress hoped it would.

At a very small meeting in my town tonight, a meeting with scarcely a dozen people, a meeting that had nothing to do with politics, two individuals commented on the congressional slapdown. One was familiar with MoveOn but had, because of the Congressional smackdown, decided it was time to not just read their platform but support them financially; the other was unfamiliar with MoveOn until this flap and has now decided to join it and lend his fiscal support to them. Not because of the ad, but because of the visceral Congressional response to MoveOn’s act of free speech.

“[It is] a sad day in the Senate when we spend hours debating an ad while our young people are dying in Iraq. Now that the Senate has twice voted on this ad, it is time to move on and vote to end the war.” – Christopher Dodd

MoveOn.org today circulated a defiant e-mail vowing to keep up the fight and said of the Senate:

“Every day, our brave men and women are dying in a bloody civil war this Senate has done nothing to stop. Yesterday, they couldn’t even pass a bill to give soldiers adequate leave with their families before redeploying. But they’re spending time cracking down on a newspaper ad?

“So, we’re making clear where America stands. We’re releasing a statement from MoveOn members—and anyone else who feels the same way—saying, ‘We will not be quiet, we will fight back. We will keep speaking out until Congress forces an exit plan for this awful war.’”  – Eli Pariser, MoveOn.org

MoveOn.org has an e-mail list of 3.2 million, with numbers booming in the aftermath of the ad. It reminded me a of a scene in the A&E film The Magnificent Ambersons, where young George tries to defend his mother against potentially malicious chatter. His fiery protest and demands for retractions only gave the gossip greater credence and blew it up into the talk of the town; left alone it might have lingered but would have drifted into nothing on its own. There’s a message in there, and if you really read the ad — it questions the validity, the honesty of the general’s White House white-washed testimony but never once questions his patriotism.

Like the soldiers who serve under him, Petraeus is doing his duty. I watched his testimony, and found him to be refreshingly less rah-rah-sis-boom-bah than the President about the purported successes in Iraq and quite willing to admit that deployments cannot be infinite and there the possibility of failure looms. He admitted we might lose. Or at least, not win. Wow.

So what do I want to see and hear?

I’d like to see my elected Representatives and Senators respond to a reality check. Election 2008 is around the corner. America is divided and at the public level, party lines are beginning to blur. I am not happy with them.

A lot of Americans feel the same way. If they aren’t registered to vote, I’m encouraging them to register. And to get ready to vote. It’s never too soon for that. Despite questions about the validity of voting machines and the balloting process, if enough ticked off Americans show up at the polls, it will make a difference.

Americans, many, many Americans, are fed up with the status quo of the war and the economy and a Congress (House and Senate) that can’t seem to get anything done (not counting the military aspects of increased war debt, longer deployments, shorter stateside duty).

Maybe, though, they won’t have to do much more, because We the People of America can opt out of the mayhem on Capitol Hill by choosing to not vote for incumbents who do not reflect or respond to our views. We can choose to put our campaign dollars and our votes where our conscience stands.

We the People of America will not be silenced at the whim of an wimpy, impotent, lackluster Congress, nor will those of us who oppose the War in Iraq back down from our beliefs or the exercise of our basic right to dissent. It’s all there, in the Bill of Rights. Overshadowed by the Congress and the Patriot Act. Read the fine print, people. Before your congress steps on it again.

I thought people would be dying to do something when we invaded an innocent country.

Gosh and heck, people would be ready to do something when Fahrenheit 9/11 came out!  Remember the part where George is holding hands with a Bin Laden?  Who besides me thought, “there’s no way George Bush is going to try to kill any Bin Laden”?  My Army neighbor, hot on the trail of Osama Bin Laden, came back from Afghanistan after friendly fire dropped bombs on his troop.  

Bush, Cheney—they’re OIL tycoons. 

I thought people would be jumping mad when the 2004 election was proven to be fictitious, hacked—without a doubt.  I thought they’d at least want to hear about it and then do something.

How about taking out the constitution in government and putting in the bible?  HELLO Dark Ages.

I thought people would want to do something when Katrina showed what incompetent Bush men run high offices.  How many Bush favorites have been found incompetent since then? 

I thought those pictures where we torture the Iraqis, would for certain make people want to do something.  There was a video on the internet of our people (contractors I believe) shooting civilian cars off the road (they had no provocation and their victims had no warning) on a highway in Iraq. 

The statistics of innocent dead civilians in Iraq.
The statistics of dead and wounded Americans in Iraq.
The stories of mental injuries to our soldiers in Iraq.
The statistic of the cost of this war. Our troops are exhausted and over the edge and we send more over for longer periods! If you haven’t seen it yet, be sure to see The Ground Truth and other movies.

Democrats compromised and took off the timeline for leaving Iraq.  I don’t think I’ve recovered from that one yet. The president stated he wants to set up Iraq just like South Korea. 

So if there’s a draft, everybody is going to hit the streets in protest?  (that’s what she thought)  All of a sudden my boss and my neighbor is going to now jump out there and protest for other people’s sons?  He/she doesn’t do it now while thousands of other people’s sons and daughters are dying (Iraqis included).  People like me would probably be seen doing psycho things like laying down in front of cars to protest.  And there’d be a resurgence in protest by people who are already used to action.   But there would be another waiting…waiting for someone else to do something.  “Aha, now they’re going to do something.”   ”Now those Republicans are going to pay”, we’d think smugly. 

Action starts somewhere.  And it starts now.

At our last rally some people from Nashville had signs that said “Honk for Peace”.  It was overwhelming how many honks we heard.  That honk was a small action.  A small doing.  That’s how it starts.   All of our actions started small.  We went to other people’s rallies.  We saw movies, we searched the web.  We went to poetry readings and art galleries and plays and the park.  We picked up litter.  When someone held a rally or a protest, we went. 

When MoveOn.org said to ”sign the petition,” we did.  We wrote our own letters and letters to the editor.  Writing to the editor was a bit scary at first and some weren’t printed.  But we supported each other and persisted and showed there was another viewpoint out here.  For one of us that letter writing and research evolved into clarksvilleonline.  Now this blog offers us the opportunity to speak out.   

Each one of us has to get up, move our bodies and not lay like possums waiting to be run over.

What is it that you think should be done?  Now realize that you have no champion to stand for you.  Ask yourself what little thing you can do today.  If you feel strongly about something, do a little thing about it yourself.  Then do more.  Empower yourself.  Let decency be your guide. 

Your bottom line happened a long time ago.   

Movement, a little at a time, is the answer.