Page One

Editor: 

“Come on, you guys,” I said to Ashley and Tee, “Let’s do something for Martin Luther King’s birthday today!” 

“Sorry. Can’t,” replied Tee, our exchange student from Thailand. “Got a math final on Tuesday. I gotta study.” 

“It's too early in the morning!” replied Ashley. “And besides, I’ve got that Sakai interview today.” 

Ashley’s local Girl Scout council was choosing girls to send on an exchange with Sakai, Japan in 2002 and she really wanted to go on it. 

“Well. Fine.” I said. “I'll just go by myself.”  

But not without delivering a lecture first! “No one else on this entire planet seems to believe in peace and love and, hopefully, the evolution of the human spirit into something more wondrous and beautiful than just a neo-Nazi killing machine straight out of the Stone Age,” I lectured. “Except only me.” 

“Go, Ma!” said Ashley. 

“And if I have to hold to higher ideals for the human race all by my poor lonely misbegotten self – then I’m still going to believe in Peace! A Person’s gotta do what a Person’s gotta do!” 

Ashley and Tee cheered me on! (Actually, they were just hoping I’d leave so they could go back to studying and sleeping...) 

“Martin Luther King was onto something,” I continued despite the flagging interest from my audience. “Even George Washington and Abraham Lincoln used violence and killing and nasty stuff to gain their ends. King didn’t. He won his war using love. That’s incredible!” 

I had recently gotten into a very heated argument with someone I really liked – which shocked me very deeply. How can I hope for world peace when I myself was not even able to be peaceful with someone I trusted and loved – let alone those nasty strangers lurking in nightmares and trying to blow up babies. 

Human nature is filled with land mines. 

“Peace is much harder than blowing things up,” I warned the kids (and myself) one last time and left out the door to attend the Allen Temple Baptist Church’s “Take Back the Dream” celebration in East Oakland.  

The pastor said, “Let’s ALL work together in peace – all the peoples of the earth.” The stranger next to me smiled and patted my hand. I felt better, more hopeful and also not so alone. 

Happy Martin Luther King’s birthday! 

Love,  

Jane Stillwater 

PS: My former neighbor’ s friend Paul (larudee@pacbell. net) is working with a Palestinian-Israeli peace group to use non-violent techniques to end the conflict in Isreal and to protest Israeli settlers' illegal seizures of Palestinian homes, vineyards, orchards, businesses, etc.  

Not many people are aware that, in the last few years, it was very common for an Israeli “settler” to see a prosperous Palestinian farm, like it and seize it. “If you do not like what we're doing,” the settler would then tell the rightful owners, “we will kill you. This land is mine! God gave this land to ME.” The Palestinean family would then be forced to leave.  

If you don't believe that Israelis are capable of doing that, just rent the old movie “Exodus.”