Cindy Sheehan and SiCKO Sisters Donna Smith & Reggie Cervantes Unite
By Donna Smith, American SiCKO
"Building a New World"
First Summit of the World Prout Assembly
Seminar entitled: Revolution
Left to right, Donna Smith, Cindy Sheehan and Reggie Cervantes together before Cindy delivered her keynote address for a conference session held at Radford University last weekend. Donna and Reggie, both American SiCKOs, participated in the conference as panelists, and Donna keynoted the health care section for activists gathered from throughout the U.S. and beyond. Hundreds attended the event. (Photo by Reggie Cervantes)
RADFORD, VA — Wow, to be here with Cindy Sheehan, the woman with whom I have shared so much in cyberspace as we both appeared on Michael Moore's website over the months but never met face-to-face. Cindy, I am so sorry for the loss of Casey. But I am also so joyful for you as you welcome Jonah, your first grandchild. And I am grateful to you for your continued heroism on my behalf and on behalf of all American mothers and sons, fathers and daughters. Blessings to you and thank you for being here. And may you be elected to Congress as a new co-sponsor for HR676, the National Health Insurance Act.
My fellow revolutionaries, I bring you glad tidings from your fellow citizens. Over the past nine months, I have visited 27 states and the District of Columbia spreading the single payer, universal health care message. And I can tell you without doubt the revolution has begun.
In some places, there are seedlings popping gently but with determination toward change: in South Dakota, in Mississippi, in West Virginia, in North Carolina and in DC, and even in Dick Cheney's Wyoming.
In other places, saplings are more steady and and beginning to bare witness that will soon hold the steady branches of real change: in Indiana, Pennsylvania, California, Washington state, Illinois, Tennessee, Kentucky and Alabama -- even Utah and Colorado, New York and Maryland. Add Florida and Katrina-ravaged Louisiana, Georgia, South Carolina and Massachusetts. Delaware, Minnesota, Missouri, New Jersey, and now in Virginia.
These people of the revolution gather and they speak and they plan -- the next action, the next protest -- the real stuff of people on a mission. And they look to us to help provide the passion and the fuel necessary to inspire them onward. The noise of discontent must blossom and mature. And to the extent that each of us here -- engines of revolution in thought, in action and in art -- inspire and conspire with one another and all of our fellow citizens, the revolution will come.
Are there any other Phi Betta kappa members in the room today? Were you taught the "secret' handshake the revolutionary and pre-presidential Thomas Jefferson and the other founding members used to safely identify one another? I was. And with that lesson came my knowledge that this nation was and is still most assuredly subject to conditions that require, that compel, that demand not secrecy so much as loyalty to one another as revolutionaries and to the causes for which we would still die.
For me, that cause is the basic human right of health care for all. And make no mistake. I am a patriot in the most sincere and revolutionary traditions of my foremothers and forefathers.
On November 19, 1864 (and I have an affinity for that date since November 19th is my own birthday), Abraham Lincoln said, "Four score and seven years ago, our fathers set forth upon this continent a new nation -- conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal."
I am holding him to that promise and to that truth. I am holding you to that promise, and I am holding my nation to that higher purpose that uplifts and empowers us all and all people of the world.
Code word for the new revolution? RADFORD. Onward, my friends to the revolution. Thank you.
