By Cynthia McKinney. Posted at On The Wilder Side and Green Party Watch. Reposted to IPR by Paulie. Cynthia McKinney was the 2008 Presidential nominee of the US Green Party, and Leonard Peltier was the 2004 Presidential nominee of the Peace and Freedom Party.
Today, I sent this message to the President:
“Mr. President, Justice delayed is justice denied. Leonard Peltier’s family report that he has been brutally beaten while in custody. Peltier should be released. He has become a global symbol of injustice and prison abuse. Imprisoned in the late 1970s, Peltier has never been given a fair trial. Yet he has been a model prisoner. In April he wrote: “Given the choice of lying down to die or standing up to live, we chose to live.” Let Peltier live. Please free Leonard Peltier now.”
It’s easy to send a message to President Obama to help him deliver on the hope and change he promised. Now is the time for us to act.
Unfortunately, the President has already signed an order allowing the continued bombing of Pakistan and his promised Afghanistan surge is underway. What that means for all of us is more war.
If we are to have true and lasting peace, it should be clear by now that we won’t get it by confining our electoral choices to only the ones presented to us in sophisticated, highly managed public relations campaigns. True and lasting peace will come only with justice. Freeing our political prisoners, including Peltier, Mumia, Sundiata, Mutulu, Imam El-Amin, our Puerto Rican political prisoners, and so many more is but a down payment on the path of justice and reconciliation that our country so sorely needs.
3 responses so far ↓
1 Windtalker // Jan 29, 2009 at 4:42 pm
America speaks of healing the rift between the Muslim world and the U.S well i also think that the rift created in the last 150 years between the Europeans and the first nations of these lands should also be mended for you as Americans are in need of healing and mending the rifts in your own back yard between two powerful nations yours and ours for we are now one family one world one dream what better way to bring us closer together but to start right in your own back yard this would be a great start and i pray it comes to pass there would celebration all across turtle island if this came to be and thank you Cynthia for he wouldn,t listen to me or my people i pray he will listen to you
God bless!!
2 Prospective Advertiser // Feb 1, 2009 at 7:39 pm
I watched “Dances with Wolves” today and couldn’t help but cheer every time a blue uniformed soldier was killed, beaten, or scalped. It is so good to see brutal, ugly, illiterate, idiotic, hateful villains being butchered, for a change. Even just the portrayal of such good news helped gladden my heart.
3 Laura Adams // Mar 29, 2009 at 6:36 am
with Liberty
…and Justice
…for all …for ALL …FOR ALL!!!!
There are many occasions where we are expected, demanded to repeat the words of this pledge. My children say it in school, we say it before all public occasions.
In my veins and those of my children runs the blood of many peoples from many lands, metis from the Miamis, Ouiatenon, Lakota, Kaskaskia, Osage, Panis, and Shawnee nations intermingled with French blood; my Scotswoman ancestor who married into the Creek nation; the Cherokee wife of an Irishman. I am very, very proud of this heritage and have passed that pride to my daughters. Does this mean I know anything of the traditions of my Native ancestors? What little I have been able to learn second hand. Does it mean I have paid the immeasurable price of having society judge me as a Native? No. Does it give me any more or less responsibility to work and fight for what is right? Only as a Human Being. Americans will cry out at injustice in other countries, go to war over human atrocities– how about looking inward? Every person who spouts the ideals put forward each time we recite the Pledge of Allegiance, then has a responsibility to make them as true as we possibly can. No one can give Leonard Peltier back the 30+ YEARS of his life that have been stolen from him and his family. But certainly, at this late date, liberty and justice for ALL should include freeing Mr. Peltier when it is so well-documented and well-known that he should never have been incarcerated at all. Every day that passes with him in confinement adds to the hypocracy and shame of America.
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