I was looking for some specific information on Don Siegelman and ran across a 2008 Democracy Now! interview with a woman from "Economic Human Rights". Economic-human-rights
In the United States of America, people have to have movements to advocate on behalf of the poor (and who isn't a paycheck or a heart attack away from being there too?) so they have food, medical care...a place to put their heads at night...a way to take care of their kids.
In the United States of America, an innocent former governor has to jump through hoops, beg, elicit a movement on his behalf, rack up unfathomable lawyers' fees...to solicit JUSTICE from the department of JUSTICE!
WHAT'S WRONG WITH THIS COUNTRY??? Aren't we people of conscience working hard enough? Voting enough? Campaigning enough? Donating enough? Emailing enough? Meeting enough? Calling enough? Caring enough?
What is wrong with this country? The structure of justice and decency that was supposed to be our framework is but a ghost haunting the Capitol Building and the White House.
When did doing the right thing become the last priority on the list instead of the first?
Yesterday I caught Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on the radio reading this quote from a Jeffrey Toobin New Yorker piece about our current Chief Justice of the Supreme Court: "In every major case since he became the nation's seventeenth Chief Justice, Roberts has sided with the prosecution over the defendant, the state over the condemned, the executive branch over the legislative, and the corporate defendant over the individual plaintiff. Even more than Scalia, who has embodied judicial conservatism during a generation of service on the Supreme Court, Roberts has served the interests, and reflected the values, of the contemporary Republican Party."
And then Kennedy went on to talk about fascism as a system that values the whole over the parts, the corporation over the individual, the state over the individual.
Well, I can't fathom living in a country that is a democracy in name only. I want my country back, and if that means more phone calls, more emails, more advocacy, so be it. (Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
We can't stop until Don Siegelman is a free man. We can't stop until healthcare in this country is treated as a right and not as a rigged carnival game. We can't stop until our brave military men and women's lives are valued and revered and no longer looked at as collateral damage. We can't stop fighting for a sustainable planet.
