Thank-you Carleton. Thank-you Milan! Milan, I’m very grateful to see your posting - even if I am reading it for the 100th time. It describes our moment in history in so appropriately. The same ‘white entitlement’ pretending not to be racist (or sexist vis a vis abortion rights) is on the rise here in Canada. It is predominately male, so-called Christian and fearful of losing it’s place. In Toronto, Canada’s largest city, us whites are now a minority. In Canada, diversity is our strength. Trudeau’s Liberals embrace climate change, racial diversity, feminism, distribution of wealth and the inclusion of the LGBTQ community. Conservatives reject all of the above and are almost exclusively white and so-called Christian in their opposition. In my riding of 100,000, a rural riding called Lanark-Frontenac-Kingston (between Montreal, Ottawa, Kingston and Toronto) our Candidate in the October 21st Federal Election is Kayley Kennedy, a 24 year-old white woman and human rights advocate. She has family roots going back 150 years in this turf, is well-educated, yet very rural in her style. She has asked me, at almost 77, to be her Campaign Manager. All my town meeting, cadre, gridding and fundraising abilities are getting out for a romp again. In Canada, it appears that she is the youngest Candidate running for Parliament and I am the oldest Campaign Manager. As I write, we now have metro teams in each of our 13 rural municipalities at work. Sound familiar? Over the past 18 years, our Conservative Member of Parliament has won the past 6 elections. While it is time for change, and while we are committed to the hard work of door-to-door, it truly is in the ‘hands of the grace of god’. Remembering Mandela & de Klerk; remembering Gandhi & the salt tax; remembering the ‘overnight’ fall of the Berlin Wall; it will be with the grace of god when the demonic forces of Trump are expelled and the fascists of Canadian conservatism are once more put back in a box! Now is the time. We are the people. Ken
On Jul 20, 2019, at 4:31 PM, Carleton Stock via OE <oe@lists.wedgeblade.net> wrote:
Amen! When we were pastors of a church near Pittsburgh, I had that Niemoller quote on my des'k! It does seem more applicable to the US these days. Let's work to turn The Donald out of The White House! An editorial in the St. Louis paper this week said essentially the same thing! Carleton Stock St. Louis
-----Original Message----- From: Linda and Milan Hamilton via OE <oe@lists.wedgeblade.net> To: George Holcombe <oe@lists.wedgeblade.net> Cc: Linda and Milan Hamilton <lindaandmilan@gmail.com> Sent: Sat, Jul 20, 2019 12:44 pm Subject: [Oe List ...] Who Will Speak Up!
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Pastor Martin Niemöller at his desk in his home. Berlin, Germany, ca. 1936. US Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Sibylle Niemoeller
As I watch in muffled horror what is happening to our beloved Republic, especially in the past three years, I remembered this quote from a Lutheran pastor in Germany after it was too late to stop Hitler’s Nazi party march to obliterate the German Republic:
First they came for the Communists And I did not speak out Because I was not a Communist
Then they came for the Socialists And I did not speak out Because I was not a Socialist
Then they came for the trade unionists And I did not speak out Because I was not a trade unionist
Then they came for the Jews And I did not speak out Because I was not a Jew
Then they came for me And there was no one left To speak out for me
Pastor Martin Niemöller
Niemoller was at first a supporter of Hitler and his policies, but as the revelations moved on to what the Nazi machine’s propaganda campaign was doing to eliminate any opposition by systematically silencing the free press, removing “sick” elements of the population, the gypsies, the handicapped, the “undesirables,” the “non-Aryans” (non-white), the Jews, and any others deemed “enemies of the State” by the Nazi party. We now know how that turned out.
I am discerning some parallels to what happened there, in terms of the way a democratic republic can be chipped away at and ultimately destroyed, in our good old U.S. of A.
“First he went after the Mexican immigrants by calling them rapists and murderers and the Republicans did not speak out because they were not Mexicans.
“Then he went after the Muslims by calling them terrorists and the Republicans did not speak out because they were not Muslims.
“Then he went after the free press by calling them “fake news” reporters and the Republicans did not speak out because they were not journalists.
“Then he went after the Democrats by calling them socialists and the Republicans did not speak out because they were not Democrats.
“Then he went after the Judges by calling them supporters of Democrats and the Republicans did not speak out because they were not supporters of Democrats.
“Then he went after African American and Muslim and Puerto Rican American citizens who were also members of Congress telling them to “go back where they came from” and the Republicans did not speak out because they were afraid of him.”
I do not know how this will turn out but I am sure of one thing. When he goes after the “fake and disloyal” Republicans, there won’t be anyone left to speak for them.
Wake up America! Wake up Democrats! Wake up you sleeping Republicans who still have a sense of what is happening! Before it is too late! Save our democratic Republic!
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