Why we fight: A mother's guide to civil disobedience...

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Why We Fight; A Mother's Guide to Civil Disobedience

by Elaine Brower

http://www.opednews.com



WHY WE FIGHT: A MOTHER'S GUIDE TO CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE

While my son is fighting for his life in Fallujah, under some false pretense that we are "defending democracy" or "killing terrorists", I decided to take up the fight at home. Very few here are left defending our Constitutional rights. Those who are trying are getting exhausted. We have a march after a rally and, then, march again. Five years later, the war gets worse and the Middle East is on fire. There is extreme rendition, Hurricane Katrina "survivors", spying on U.S. citizens in the name of preserving our freedoms, domestic economic failures and disasters, higher gas prices, and the global cowboy foreign policies that we have to listen to and witness on a daily basis.

Well, being a true patriot who flies the American Flag and the Marine Corps. Flag outside her home in suburban Staten Island, New York, I decided to fight against the rapid whittling down of our rights to free speech. I made plans to get arrested at the United Nations when the liars and crime bosses were visiting. I'm talking about those from our own Government.

The planning started a few weeks before, and it was done quietly but with great determination. I spoke to only those I knew felt the same hopeless feelings I had. Too many issues to just have a rally and go home. When the world was visiting New York City, we would strike. And so we did. Sixteen determined citizens from all walks of life, all ages and backgrounds, decided to perform an act of non-violent civil disobedience in front of the United Nations on September 19th when the General Assembly was meeting to decide the fate of the world.

It was the scariest thing I had ever undertaken in my life, including my 3 marriages. Being married to a retired police lieutenant, and having 2 sons who are NYPD officers, I asked myself what in the world was I doing. But seeing the smirk on the face of George Bush when he visited the site of Ground Zero and using it as his backdrop for a photo op once again, I decided I was doing the right thing. If he could stand there and humiliate me and this Country, I could walk into the fires of hell to stop him.

The morning of the event came and I had gone sleepless the night before. I showed up at our meeting location and all I could see was my heart pumping right out of my shirt. I kept telling myself "You can't do this, you can't do this!" But then I looked at my son's picture which I carry with me, and I thought of all those funerals I had attended over the course of his deployment, the sadness in those mothers' eyes and the questions they had as to why this happened, and I grew calm.

The rest is at: http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_elaine_b_060925_why_we_fight_3b_a_moth.htm