Dennis Kucinich is running for president. The last time he ran, I wrote a letter to the editor to support him, gave up some of my cell phone minutes calling people to encourage them to vote for him, and sent money for his campaign. Some of my friends think I am a bit crazy because Dennis hasn’t a chance of winning the presidency. I know that and Dick Feagler knows that, but we both support him for the same reason. Dennis stands for something that we believe in. Dennis along with Ohio’s new senator, Sherrod Brown opposed the war from the beginning. Both opposed trade agreements that do not protect the environment or fair wages and safe working conditions.
Dennis may not win, but Dennis is a voice that needs to be heard, and by running for president again, he will be expressing not only his own views, but the views of many in our nation who long for peace and oppose corporate greed. I believe that peace and economic exploitation are inversely related, so you can’t long for peace and support policies that exploit workers around the world. This is the time of year when we talk about peace on earth, but how hard are we willing to work and sacrifice for it?
Where does bringing peace to the world fall on our national agenda? Dennis has suggested a Department of Peace. He obviously believes that peace can happen if we work for it. Some think he is naïve to believe in it, but I think that getting people believe in peace is three fourths of the battle.
Peter Pan is one of my favorite stories because it appeals to the child in me that I hope never to lose. One of the important messages of the story is that people need to believe to make something real. Peter says about fairies, “Yes, but they're nearly all dead now. You see, Wendy, when the first baby laughed for the very first time, the laugh broke up into a thousand pieces of light, and they all went skipping about, and that was the beginning of fairies. So now every time a new baby is born, its first laugh becomes a fairy.” " . . . every time a child says, `I don't believe in fairies,' there is a fairy somewhere that falls down dead." When Tinkerbelle is poisoned it is children saying that they believe that saves her life.
Peace, like Tinkerbelle, is almost dead because we do not believe in it enough to do the hard work it takes to bring it about. We look at each other with suspicion, magnify our differences and arm ourselves for protection against the other. Dennis looks a bit like Peter Pan to me, and he is out there asking us to believe in Peace and each other. He might be naive, but in this world of cynicism, he gives me hope. Do you believe in peace? Do you really believe it can happen?
The Unitarian Universalist president, William Sinkford titled his holiday message, Restoring Hope; Waging Peace . It’s a message we need to hear in this war ravaged world.
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Indeed it is and that includes the war ravaged U*U World. Unfortunately President Bill Sinkford, the UUA and it's Ministerial Fellowship Committee, the Unitarian Church of Montreal and many other U*Us have abjectly failed and obstinately refused to engage in "waging peace" with me in spite of numerous requests and demands that they do so. In light of Rev. Bill Sinkford's and the UUA's well documented failure, and even outright refusal, to responsibly engage in genuinely "waging peace" with me I can quite justifiably accuse him of being an outrageous hypocrite and I have recently done so on The Emerson Avemger blog. I will be posting my own Holiday message that extensively quotes Bill Sinkford's Holiday message and calls upon U*Us to engage in genuinely "waging peace" with me in 2007 on my blog shortly. It will be most interesting to see just how President Bill Sinkford, the UUA and its negligent and complicit Ministerial Fellowship Committee and the Unitarian Church of Montreal respond to this call to actually practice what, so far. . . they so insincerely, hypocritically, and outright fraudulently preach.
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