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Will we be silenced any longer? No!
Excerpts from a speech by the 2006 Green-Rainbow candidate for Governor of the Commonwealth, Grace Ross, at the Party’s March 4 nominating convention in Worcester.
Do you know anyone who is or has been homeless? Anyone who has been battered, raped, or is an incest survivor? Anyone who has gone without healthcare, due to lack of coverage, or no money? Do you know people whose lives have been diminished by racial profiling, discrimination, being marked by the criminal justice system? Anyone who has been physically threatened or denied their civil rights? Anyone whose life has been harmed or lost in the making of "perpetual war," and the fanning of the flames of fear by this government? Do you know anyone whose present or future is threatened by environmental pollution and global warming? Will we be silenced any longer? No.
We must become the means, the vehicle for our voices, our outcry and those voices and outcry of so many others to be heard. Most of those eligible to vote in our Commonwealth don’t. There is nothing, no one who speaks to them, to their issues, in their languages….
And yet, these are some of the people whose lives make most clear the need for profound change. Those who know me know my life’s work is in service to the greater good. It is for each of us about creating the better future, the Beloved Community, putting the "wealth" back into the "common" which should be a CommonWealth for all of us.
The powers-that-be want us to feel despair. …Throughout this CommonWealth, great work is being done by dedicated activists. They too are struggling with despair and disempowerment. Of those of us who really care, who can honestly say that we are not struggling against despair and disempowerment as well? … I will not accept that…you must not, either.
I hear that American workers are ever more productive—I shiver. We have no time any more—to see each other, to rest quietly by a fire, in a hot bath, share a quiet meal … They deny us our time to be, to be with each other, to be the change we seek to create, to be in love with our world, our lives, each other and our community!
How many tens of thousands care deeply about housing their families, living wage jobs, saving the planet for our children and our children’s children?
But they live behind locked doors, untouched by efforts of so many on the issue they may feel most passionately about Leaders of every stripe tell them to lock the door, lock their hearts, bury their compassion—because it is hopeless. And they are denied any vision of an alternative because of the media white-out.
Do we not have a call in this time to step out of our comfort zone, risk what we have left and act before it too is taken from us? We must create momentum and help people rediscover their heart, their spirits, their compassion and vision of a just, peaceful, Beloved CommonWealth."
Grace Ross has been a life-long activist working with diverse, low-income leaders to abolish poverty and on progressive causes from nonviolence, the environment, and international solidarity to anti-racist struggles, women’s rights, union organizing and gay/lesbian civil rights.
She grew up in New York, came to Harvard for college and graduate work and found her home in the streets and primarily low-income communities’ struggle for survival and justice. She is a white lesbian living in Worcester.