Take It As Red

"As you know," writes Rep. Conyers in his letter, "on January 6, 2005, at 1:00 P.M, the electoral votes for the election of the president are to be opened and counted in a joint session of Congress. I and a number of House Members are planning to object to the counting of the Ohio votes, due to numerous unexplained irregularities in the Ohio presidential vote, many of which appear to violate both federal and state law."

"I am hoping that you will consider joining us in this important effort," writes Conyers, "to debate and highlight the problems in Ohio which disenfranchised innumerable voters. I will shortly forward you a draft report itemizing and analyzing the many irregularities we have come across as part of our hearings and investigation into the Ohio presidential election."

The Israeli army says a soldier has been arrested for calling on his comrades to refuse to evacuate a West Bank settlement outpost. It is the first case of its kind.
It happened the day after settler leaders said hundreds of soldiers might refuse to carry out orders to evacuate Gaza Strip settlers if the government went ahead with its plan to withdraw this year. The prime minister, Ariel Sharon, said yesterday that refusal to obey orders would be punished.

"This would be a serious mistake if a movement arises that supports refusal to carry out an order. The decision regarding the disengagement plan was made democratically by the government and approved by a large knesset majority. I see no justification for refusal, neither by soldiers, nor by political leaders, nor by rabbis. There might be attempts at refusal but... the law will be upheld."

Declaration of Israeli Reservists

A Refusal to Serve in the West Bank and Gaza

We, reserve combat officers and soldiers of the Israel Defense Forces, who were raised upon the principles of Zionism, sacrifice and giving to the people of Israel and to the State of Israel, who have always served in the front lines, and who were the first to carry out any mission, light or heavy, in order to protect the State of Israel and strengthen it.

We, combat officers and soldiers who have served the State of Israel for long weeks every year, in spite of the dear cost to our personal lives, have been on reserve duty all over the Occupied Territories, and were issued commands and directives that had nothing to do with the security of our country, and that had the sole purpose of perpetuating our control over the Palestinian people. We, whose eyes have seen the bloody toll this Occupation exacts from both sides.

We, who sensed how the commands issued to us in the Territories, destroy all the values we had absorbed while growing up in this country.

We, who understand now that the price of Occupation is the loss of IDF’s human character and the corruption of the entire Israeli society.

We, who know that the Territories are not Israel, and that all settlements are bound to be evacuated in the end.

We hereby declare that we shall not continue to fight this War of the Settlements.

We shall not continue to fight beyond the 1967 borders in order to dominate, expel, starve and humiliate an entire people.

We hereby declare that we shall continue serving in the Israel Defense Forces in any mission that serves Israel’s defense.

The missions of occupation and oppression do not serve this purpose-- and we shall take no part in them.

"But, as of December 30, some of the president's major family-values constituents have yet to be heard from: It's business as usual at the web sites of the American Family Association, the Family Research Council, the Christian Coalition, Focus on the Family, Concerned Women for America, and the Coral Ridge Ministries.

These powerful and well-funded political Christian fundamentalist organizations appear to be suffering from a compassion deficit. Organizations which are amazingly quick to organize to fight against same-sex marriage, a woman's right to choose, and embryonic stem cell research are missing in action when it comes to responding to the disaster in southern Asia. None of their web sites are actively soliciting aid for the victims of the earthquake/tsunami."

"Dobson, a child psychologist and the founder of the evangelical organization Focus on the Family, promises "a battle of enormous proportions from sea to shining sea" if President Bush fails to appoint "strict constructionist" jurists or if Democrats filibuster to block conservative nominees. Dobson recalled the conservative efforts that helped in the November defeat of Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle (D., S.D.), who led Democrats in using the filibuster to block 10 of Bush's judicial nominees. "Let his colleagues beware," Dobson warned, "especially those representing 'red' states. Many of them will be in the bull's-eye the next time they seek reelection."

Yahoo News: "MIAMI - Shirley Chisholm, the first black woman elected to Congress and an outspoken advocate for women and minorities during seven terms in the House, died near Daytona Beach, friends said Sunday. She was 80.
"She was our Moses that opened the Red Sea for us," Robert E. Williams, president of the NAACP in Flagler County, told The Associated Press late Sunday. He did not have the details of her death on Saturday.

Chisholm, who was raised in a predominantly black New York City neighborhood and was elected to the U.S. House in 1968, was a riveting speaker who often criticized Congress as being too clubby and unresponsive.

"My greatest political asset, which professional politicians fear, is my mouth, out of which come all kinds of things one shouldn't always discuss for reasons of political expediency," she told voters.

She went to Congress to represent New York the same year Richard Nixon was elected to the White House and served until two years into Ronald Reagan (news - web sites) tenure as president. She also was a founding member of the Congressional Black Caucus (news - web sites) in 1969.

"Anyone that came in contact with her, they had a feeling of a careness, and they felt that she was very much a part of each individual as she represented her district," William Howard, her longtime campaign treasurer, said Sunday.

Newly elected, she was assigned to the House Agriculture Committee, which she felt was irrelevant to her urban constituency. In an unheard of move, she demanded reassignment and got switched to the Veterans Affairs Committee.

Not long afterward she voted for Hale Boggs, who was white, over John Conyers, who was black, for majority leader. Boggs rewarded her with a place on the prized Education and Labor Committee and she was its third ranking member when she left.

She ran for the Democratic nomination for the presidency in 1972. When rival candidate and ideological opposite George Wallace was shot, she visited him in the hospital — an act that appalled her followers.

"He said, `What are your people going to say?' I said: `I know what they're going to say. But I wouldn't want what happened to you to happen to anyone.' He cried and cried," she recalled.

And when she needed support to extend the minimum wage to domestic workers two years later, it was Wallace who got her the votes from Southern members of Congress.

Pragmatism and power were watchwords. "Women have learned to flex their political muscles. You got to flex that muscle to get what you want," she said during her presidential campaign.

When Bella Abzug challenged Daniel Patrick Moynihan in the 1976 Democratic Senate primary, Chisholm caused a stir by backing Moynihan. "Where was Abzug when I ran for president?" she asked, when questioned about her choice.

In her book, "Unbought and Unbossed," she recounted the campaign that brought her to Congress and wrote of her concerns about that body:

"Our representative democracy is not working because the Congress that is supposed to represent the voters does not respond to their needs. I believe the chief reason for this is that it is ruled by a small group of old men"

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The Rev. Jesse Jackson (news - web sites) called Chisholm a "woman of great courage."

"She was an activist and she never stopped fighting," Jackson said from Ohio, where he is set to lead a rally on Monday in Columbus. "She refused to accept the ordinary, and she had high expectations for herself and all people around her."

Chisholm's leadership traits were recognized by her parents early on, she recalled. Born Shirley St. Hill in New York City on Nov. 30, 1924, she was the eldest of four daughters of a Guyanese father and a Barbadian mother.

Her father, an unskilled laborer in a burlap bag factory, and her mother, a domestic, scrimped to educate their children.

At age 3, Shirley was sent to live on her grandmother's farm in Barbados. She attended British grammar school and picked up the clipped Caribbean accent that marked her speech.

She moved back to New York when she was 11 and went on to graduate cum laude from Brooklyn College and earn a master's degree from Columbia University.

She started her career as director of a day care center, and later served as an educational consultant with the city's Bureau of Child Welfare. She became active in local Democratic politics and ran successfully for the state Assembly in 1964.

She was an Assemblywoman from 1964 to 1968 before besting James Farmer, the former national chairman of the Congress of Racial Equality, to gain the House seat.

"I am the people's politician," she said at the time. "If the day should ever come when the people can't save me, I'll know I'm finished."

When she left 14 years later, she complained that many of her constituents misunderstood her, that she was a "pragmatic politician" whose influence was waning in conservative times. And she said she wanted more time for her family life.

After leaving Congress, Chisholm was named to the Purington Chair at Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley, Mass., where she taught for four years. In later years she was a sought-after speaker on the lecture circuit.

"She was a tremendous leader and a voice in politics when she was in office, as well as when she left office," Manhattan Borough President C. Virginia Fields told the AP.

"Whether you agree with her politics or not, she had a moral compass and was an advocate for the underdog," said Shola Lynch, director of "Chisholm '72: Unbought and Unbossed," a documentary on her 1972 presidential campaign.

Chisholm was married twice. Her 1949 marriage to Conrad Chisholm ended in divorce in February, 1977. Later that year she married Arthur Hardwick, Jr. She had no children. Hardwick died in 1986.

"She was a mouthpiece for the underdog, the poor, underprivileged people, the people who did not have much of a chance," Conrad Chisholm, 88, told the AP early Monday in a telephone interview from West Palm Beach.

Once discussing what her legacy might be, Chisholm commented, "I'd like them to say that Shirley Chisholm had guts. That's how I'd like to be remembered."