Last week I met a young woman who is walking across the United States. She says she's doing what Granny D did on behalf of campaign finance reform, only she is taking grievances to the President. Jeanette Wallis got activated in Seattle in 1999, because she got tear-gassed while walking home from the grocery store. She wasn't demonstrating. She was just minding her own business. Maybe, you say, she should have known enough to stay home. Being tear-gassed for no good reason was enough to motivate her to become an activist against the grinding down of civil rights by the governmental mentality operating in this country.

She has been working her way purposefully through rural areas, talking to the folks who live on the land and in the small communities. And her message is, that everyone has a right to take a grievance about the way the country is being run to the President of the United States, and she is willing to be the messenger.

It may seem like a puny effort, particularly as it will take a long time for her to get to Washington, DC. She doesn't expect to get there before next spring. But there is a power in it. The David standing before Goliath, having carefully selected his smooth, round stone. Her smooth, rounds stones are missives from the people.

Tonight I heard a portion of a talk begin given by Howard Zinn, who suggested that we re-read the Declaration of Independence, upon which the United States has its very basis. He told of a soldier who posted the Declaration on his barracks wall in Vietnam during the war and was commanded to take it down. (I invite you to read the Declaration at this website: US History.org).

I am not enarmored of this President who wishes to trod over the will of the world, the will of his military advisors (but not the Secretary of the Defense), and, I believe, the will of the majority of the people of the United States, in order to bludgeon a single nation which has not declared war against the United States.

I have a grievance to give him. It is that he was not elected President to become the tyrant of the world. (Of course, I remind myself that the majority of voters did not elect him, either.) Nor was he elected to move the United States to become the world's foremost bully, listening to none. Nor was he elected to rip out every possible protection of our air, water, and land from degradation and abuse.

It is up to each citizen of the United States who feels strongly about this, to say no to war against Iraq. To say no to being the bully tyrant of the world. To say no to the rotten rule-making and unmaking in the agencies of the government. To speak out that we refuse to live in the fear that our leaders want us to live in, in order that they may further trample our civil liberties and our rights.

That is my message for Jeanette to carry to Washington, DC.

Blessings on you all,
Cherie