My mother was a Civil Rights activist and a teacher. She passed away in 1998.My father was an Army intel op in the Second World War. He passed away in 1985. I have been writing since I was very young. I have been involved in politics, the civil rights movement, and the anti-war movement since I was a child. My mother founded the first integrated pre-school for black and white children in Roxbury, Massachusetts in 1941. That was 13 years before the official beginning of the Civil Rights movement in America. Every weekend for our coming up years, my mother brought us into Boston for rallies and teach-ins. My early life was filled with the speeches of Martin Luther King. I heard them live, and I read them over and over. His writing had a profound effect on me. Later in life I read about Mahatma Ghandi. I think he might be my vote of the greatest political and religious leader who ever lived. My mother would have told us stories about Mahatma Ghandi and the Salt Marches. When war was declared against Iraq in 2003 I had been living out of the United States for 10 years or more. I lived an idyllic life in Ireland, in a beautiful cottage, with a lovely boyfriend who was one of the greatest musicians in all of Ireland. I played fiddle badly, but I had a supremely happy life. When I heard George W. Bush's State of the Union Address in 2003, when I heard him outline the "Axis of Evil," and when I heard him boast that the had sanctioned the summary execution of 3,000 Afghani prisoners, something snapped inside. When war was declared on Iraq I reached a turning point. For years I had been contributing 20% of everything I earned through my painting and writing to Medicins Sans Frontieres. For years I had enjoyed a life that few people could imagine. But it ended when war was declared on Iraq. I had many Iraqi friends, and because of the art and literature and antiquities in Iraq, I just could not countenance any war of agression against that country.Obviously something "snapped inside" her, but it had snapped long before she heard George Bush inveigh against the "axis of evil." Listen lady, if you can't distinguish between enemy states and their people (most of whom are not our enemies), you are too stupid to be taken seriously about anything. If you're defending the "axis" states of North Korea, Iran, and pre-invasion Iraq, you have forfeited your right to judge anyone else's morality. And if you simply think that war is inherently "bad" because "it just is" or because civilians sometimes get caught in the crossfire, then you dishonor your father's memory.
With company like that (and several dozen other nutcases and "liberal" statists), it's no wonder I recently resigned from BNN. Something snapped.
