Wednesday, January 23, 2013

Ladd Everitt on the President's Inaugural Speech

In a rousing Second Inaugural Address yesterday—reiminiscent at times of the rhetoric and idealism of Martin Luther King, Jr.—President Obama reminded the nation that there is work to be done to build a safer America. In his words, "Our journey is not complete until all of our children, from the streets of Detroit to the hills of Appalachia to the quiet lanes of Newton, know that they are cared for and cherished and always safe from harm." 


The President refuses to give up on the issue of gun violence prevention and we must follow his lead. "You and I, as citizens, have the obligation to shape the debates of our time," he said yesterday, "not only with the votes we cast, but with the voices we lift." 
 
Shape the debate over gun violence. Lift your voice.  
 
Get calls in to your Members of Congress at (202) 224-3121. [To find out who your Members are, click here.] Tell them you want to see them take immediate action to approve the package of gun policy proposals President Obama unveiled on January 16th. Critical reforms like universal background checks on all gun sales and a renewal of the ban on assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition magazines.

And don't take 'No' for an answer. Like the President said, "If they say 'No,' ask them why not. Ask them what’s more important—doing whatever it takes to get a 'A' grade from the gun lobby that funds their campaigns, or giving parents some peace of mind when they drop their child off for first grade?" 
 
Thank you for working with the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence at this historic moment. I honestly believe we are on the path to a beautiful future for our country. Let's work together to get there, and soon.

Sincerely,
 
Ladd Everitt
Director of Communications

 www.csgv.org

2 comments:

  1. King condemned American war-making and concluded that until it is addressed, America’s internal problems with racism and violence would persist:

    I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today — my own government. For the sake of those boys, for the sake of this government, for the sake of the hundreds of thousands trembling under our violence, I cannot be silent.

    For those who ask the question, “Aren’t you a civil rights leader?” and thereby mean to exclude me from the movement for peace, I have this further answer. In 1957 when a group of us formed the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, we chose as our motto: “To save the soul of America.” We were convinced that we could not limit our vision to certain rights for black people, but instead affirmed the conviction that America would never be free or saved from itself until the descendants of its slaves were loosed completely from the shackles they still wear. In a way we were agreeing with Langston Hughes, that black bard of Harlem, who had written earlier:

    O, yes,
    I say it plain,
    America never was America to me,
    And yet I swear this oath –
    America will be!

    Now, it should be incandescently clear that no one who has any concern for the integrity and life of America today can ignore the present war. If America’s soul becomes totally poisoned, part of the autopsy must read: Vietnam.

    Not only has Obama failed utterly to rein in institutional racial inequality in the United States—instead intensifying the drug war and escalating deportations of illegal aliens—he has widened the indefinite war on terror to ever more theaters abroad. He tripled the U.S. presence in Afghanistan, vastly expanded the prison camp there, and started a unilateral war in Libya. He bombed Yemen and intervened in Somalia. He is on the brink of direct war in Syria and has tightened deadly sanctions on Iran. He has targeted American citizens for assassination and greatly escalated the drone bombings in Pakistan, killing thousands of civilians and hundreds of children. His policies have in multiple ways fueled the drug war violence in Mexico that has taken fifty thousand lives.
    *Anthony Gregory

    orlin sellers

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  2. I would thank the laddie for his suggestion at his Twitter account, but he's blocked me--typical behavior for control freaks. But I'm way ahead of him, in any case. I've already written to my elected senators and representative to remind them of their duty to the Constitution regarding the Second Amendment, specifically the part about how our rights "shall not be infringed."

    Sure, that'll be after what the laddie meant, begorra.

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