March 20, 2008
by Mike Palecek

TAOS, NEW MEXICO - Thank God for Rev. Jeremiah Wright, for having the guts to say what needs to be said, huh?

Wow. I was asked about this on a radio show from Tucson last night while I was at a Unitarian Church in Amarillo and I didn't know much about it.

Now I'm in this cyber cafe and got a chance to look at the sermon on Youtube. Amazing. It's that sort of stuff we should hear all the time, before we invaded Iraq, after 9-11. It's what Americans should hear in church every Sunday.

If that were so, we wouldn't be such a stupid, foul bunch of idiots, who are now pissed as hell at anyone having the audacity to speak the truth.

I was in Austin on Friday, then spent Saturday driving north to Amarillo, through Waco and Fort Worth again, to Lubbock, past the Rocking W and the Fucking A Ranches.

I spoke to a group at the Unitarian Universalist Church in Amarillo Saturday night. The organizer of the event was Mavis Belisle, who has operated The Peace Farm since the 1980s.

A big part of what Peace Farm does is to protest at the Pantex Plant outside Amarillo. For years that is one of the places where our nuclear weapons were manufactured, now they are doing both, making and tearing apart.

Back in the '80s it was Amarillo Bishop Leroy Matthiessen who called on workers at the plant to resign because their work is immoral. At about the same time Bishop Raymond Hunthausen of Seattle urged Catholics to refuse to pay part of their income tax to protest the Trident nuclear submarine based there.

Mavis calls him "Bishop Matt." She said it was hard for him to do what he did in a place like Amarillo. I ask her if it is hard for her, too, to live in west Texas and be against one of the area's largest employers.

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She is small, quiet, with long, white hair. Her eyes glisten and she looks up and says, yes.

After my talk I was interviewed by a reporter from Amarillo Channel 7.

Tough interview, mostly about how come I don't support the troops, aren't I grateful to them for my freedom?

No. I don't support the troops. You cannot support killing. They are not making us free and never did. Don't bomb Hiroshima for me, okay? Don't bomb Vietnam for me, don't bomb Iraq.

The troops in Iraq are dupes for George W. Bush. They are enforcers for the empire.

It is the protesters who are really working to keep us free.

Dude, you should know that.

Hey, lots of adobe and pueblos and shit around here. Mucho trendy.

I am now going for a walk to soak up the funk.

Tonight I will talk at the Taos Peace House, then over, down to El Paso and points west.

seeya

- Mike

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Mike Palecek [send him email] is an activist for peace and social justice. He served time in federal prison for civil disobedience and has run for US Congress. He has authored a number of books [click here to view] on behalf of the cause.

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