New Jersey Impeach Groups — 20 May 2008 — by Stuart Hutchison — We wish Ted Kennedy well, we wish him strength; our United States needs him. — A famous story, supposed to be true, had Mohandas Gandhi returning to India after a triumphant reception in England. On board the ship carrying him home was an entourage of supporters and media. An American newspaper reporter asked, “Mahatma, tell me, what do you think of civilization in America?” Gandhi answered, “I think it would be a good idea.” Funny! Wish I'd been there!

I agree with Howard Zinn and his view that the best path to civilization in our world is a classical anarchism aimed at organizing people for the good of all, with the lofty goal of achieving the eventual withering away of all the nation states. No more passports, no more guards enforcing whether or not you can go someplace. Let us strive for a civilization who’s charge to humanity is from each according to her ability, to each according to her needs. Let’s work for a civilization devoted to cooperation rather than cut-throat competition, and a society where all can enjoy prosperity and peace. There’s an important role for democracy and a voting process, but it’s not the paramount role, organizing communities is what’s most important. It’s in the organizing that a real democratic commonwealth is achieved.

I feel a palpable tension between the ideals I share with people like Zinn and others, and the “bourgeois politics” I end up devoting so much time to. Particularly in our country, when you sit back and think about it, where we suffer a system in which the political playing field is never level, where the election game is rigged more often than it isn’t, and there I am, spending so much time trying to work selfish and spineless non-leaders into obeying the oath they take to our imperfect constitution, trying to get the pols to do the right thing and impeach, prosecute and convict the criminal Bush gang. — Click TED KENNEDY to read the rest! —

It’s a real battle inside your head when you meet people who are uniquely talented, and you entertain fantasies of helping them in the electoral process. When I think of people like Larry Hamm, or Keith Armonaitis, or Randy Sandberg, or Harold Burbank, or Joan Hervey, or Carol Gay, or Mark Crispin Miller, or Susan Serpa, or Ted Glick, or George DeCarlo, or Bennet Zurofsky, or Jodin Morey, or Jane Hutchison (!), and I want to say them, “Instead of protesting and reacting, why don’t you take the plunge, why don't you run? After all, if not you, who? Yeah, I know the game’s rigged, I know the chances are bleak, but if you don't make the decision, we’re resigned forever to suffering the spineless mediocrity and corrupt cowardice that today’s Bush-league politicians inflict on us?” Now this isn’t entirely fair to some of the people on this “list” here, because some of these people have run for election; I want them to continue to run, and to refuse to let defeats stop them.

For all the wealth and privilege Ted Kennedy enjoyed, he suffered uncommonly himself. Three of his brothers were killed, a sister suffered a lobotomy, and he has on his conscience the death of a woman who died from an accident in a car he was driving. (Cue the right wing and their relentless chorus of “Chappaquiddick, Chappaquiddick!”)

Well, I’m not queasy in saying I think Ted Kennedy atoned for Mary Jo Kopechne’s death as much as it’s possible for any man to atone for the death of a passenger in his car.

When I say Ted Kennedy has accomplished more good for more people than either of his brothers John and Robert, one can answer rightly, “Well yeah, but they didn’t live as long as Ted.” That’s sure true. It’s also true that practically no one else stood up more effectively to the cruelties of Ronald Reagan, Bush 1 and Bush 2. His voice and his political stands on behalf of all the people on the losing side of the American ledger — and I count myself one of them — are consistent and strong, specially on the primary levels of poverty and health care and education. Without Ted Kennedy in the U.S. Senate, the lot of almost all Americans would be much poorer than it is. His dedication to our commonwealth is commendable and exemplary. And had Ted Kennedy been elected president, we would not have achieved paradise, but we would sure be a better and more prosperous people, and I don’t believe he would have allowed the oligarchs to push us into all the insane bloody wars that have wasted so many millions of people on our poor, precious planet.

We wish Ted Kennedy well, we wish him strength; our United States needs him.