Tom Paine, American Revolutionary!
http://www.tompaine.com/feature2.cfm/ID/9401 | 16.11.2003 10:34
A URL that has some interesting stuff, which readers might have been put off from looking at as a result of some "Tom Paine" submissions. Do get the original's book "The Age of Reason" to fortify your religious arguments.
Hope Dies Last
Studs Terkel, prize-winning author and radio broadcast personality, is the author of Hope Dies Last: Keeping the Faith in Difficult Times (New Press, 2003).
Hope has never trickled down. It has always sprung up. That's what Jessie de la Cruz meant when she said, "I feel there's gonna be a change, but we're the ones gonna do it, not the government. With us, there's a saying, ‘La esperanza muere última. Hope dies last.' You can't lose hope. If you lose hope, you lose everything."
She, a retired farm worker, was recounting the days before Cesar Chavez and his stoop-labor colleagues founded the United Farm Workers (UFW). It was a metaphor for much of the twentieth century.
As we enter the new millennium, hope appears to be an American attribute that has vanished for many, no matter what their class or condition in life. The official word has never been more arrogantly imposed. Passivity, in the face of such a bold, unabashed show of power from above, appears to be the order of the day. But it ain't necessarily so.
Letters to the editors of even our more conservative papers indicate something else, something that does not make the six o'clock news: a stirring show of discontent in the fields, a growing disbelief in the official word.
Go to URL for the rest
Studs Terkel, prize-winning author and radio broadcast personality, is the author of Hope Dies Last: Keeping the Faith in Difficult Times (New Press, 2003).
Hope has never trickled down. It has always sprung up. That's what Jessie de la Cruz meant when she said, "I feel there's gonna be a change, but we're the ones gonna do it, not the government. With us, there's a saying, ‘La esperanza muere última. Hope dies last.' You can't lose hope. If you lose hope, you lose everything."
She, a retired farm worker, was recounting the days before Cesar Chavez and his stoop-labor colleagues founded the United Farm Workers (UFW). It was a metaphor for much of the twentieth century.
As we enter the new millennium, hope appears to be an American attribute that has vanished for many, no matter what their class or condition in life. The official word has never been more arrogantly imposed. Passivity, in the face of such a bold, unabashed show of power from above, appears to be the order of the day. But it ain't necessarily so.
Letters to the editors of even our more conservative papers indicate something else, something that does not make the six o'clock news: a stirring show of discontent in the fields, a growing disbelief in the official word.
Go to URL for the rest
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