Add Me to Your Lists
by Alan Morse
CommonDreams.org

Saturday, 19 October, 2002

Add me to your lists Mr. Bush.

Send my name to Mr. Ashcroft. Forward it to the FBI, the local police, the INS and the IRS.

Make sure your Secret Service takes note.

Copy my name to every blacklist, enemies list, security list, and watch list your scribes scribble.

While you detain activists at airports, I am ashamed to travel unchallenged.

While you abduct untold, unnamed foreign-born Americans, I am ashamed to sleep in my own bed.

While you steal food, not just rights, from millions of families, I am ashamed to eat.

I am ashamed to wear new clothes; ashamed to drive; ashamed to share ill-gotten wealth with your kind; even ashamed I can provide better for my little daughter than almost any father on earth.

I am not a threat to you, but I stand with billions. God is not on my side–or yours–but the best traditions of freedom, right, and non-violent resistance are with me. I stand alongside the Senator your intern calls senile. I stand with the Congresswoman your operatives unseated in the primaries. I stand with the loud but lonely voices of those in print and broadcast media who are not afraid to challenge you. I stand with the growing number of principled government clerks who quietly undermine you. I stand with countless noble people across the world who are no longer cowed by bully-America.

I am but one speck you can blow aside, but even your family and friends can’t ignore legions of us. In your ignorance, you have wakened forces that will bring you down.

You remind me of forgotten traditions: ancestors who fought non-violently for peace in eighteenth century Virginia; antecedents who broke nineteenth century laws to help slaves to freedom; parents’ siblings who aided conscientious objectors during World War II; my own non-violent resistance to Vietnam, and more recently, to Reagan’s adventures in Nicaragua.

Your adept predecessors persuaded with honey and intelligence, but your ignorance now shakes us. For that, and for that alone, I thank you. Now we will resist and topple your kind.

You have guns, bombs, but we have the power of non-violent resistance. Those who read know that firepower is laughable in the face of such force. Be afraid, Mr. Bush, and all who serve yourselves in backing this fragile regime, for you have germinated the seeds of your downfall.

We do not threaten your person or your pathetic toys, but we will cast you on the trash-heap of history. You can lead only by our consent...that, you have squandered.

Add me to your lists, Mr. Bush. I may be insignificant, but wait. I have time, history, and numbers on my side, and I am not the tiniest bit afraid of you.

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Alan Morse lives in Phillips, Maine. Email: amorse (at) somtel.com