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Thursday, October 25, 2012

GEORGE McGOVERN - THE FIRST PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE I VOTED FOR

In 1972 I was a student at Concordia Teachers College (Now Concordia University - Nebraska) when George McGovern's bus pulled up to the Seward County Court House. It was the first, and only time I heard a presidential candidate speak at an open rally. I don't remember the speech he gave that day. Perhaps I was caught up in the excitement of being so close to a person who might have been president. Through the years, I have been drawn to McGovern's stand on immigration. Unless you are a native American, and I would add, African American, you are in America due to immigration. That's what made America. McGovern knew that, and he championed the cause of immigration. I voted for McGovern in 1972. It was the first time I voted for anybody. McGovern lost by a landslide. Many of us who heard McGovern that day were energized. We would vote again. We would look for politicians who represented our values. And we would be successful in getting a few elected. I am proud of my vote for McGovern. It was not wasted.

The Jewish Council for Public Affairs (JCPA) reacted to a letter sent last week to congress by several American Christian leaders that called on lawmakers to "make U.S. military aid to Israel contingent upon its government's compliance with applicable US laws and policies" with "thinly-veiled charges" of anti-Semitism. These charges are being used as a club to stifle legitimate critique of Israel. This is short sighted. Anti-Semitism is alive. But the church leaders who signed that letter are not engaged in anti-Semitism. They are on an errand. This is a conversation about, and a call for justice. Given the history of maltreatment, disenfranchisement, displacement, and death, and given the shared experience of genocide itself, where is the grief, the hurt, the repulsion at what is being done to Palestinians by the State of Israel? When will there be recognition of the violence being done by Israel?