One Video for the Whole Country

Suppose everyone in the country was going to take 5 minutes to listen or read any form of media about why the U.S. should end the war in Iraq immediately. What would you recommend?

Before you answer, take a look at this speech that Rep. John Lewis gave on the floor of the House the other day explaining why he wasn't going along with the Democratic leadership an voting to give Bush another $100 billion for the war, regardless of how many strings and deadlines were allegedly attached to the bill.

I challenge anyone to find a more powerful, more deeply rooted, more spiritually compelling 5-minute presentation about why we should end the war today and only spend money on bringing the troops home as quickly as possibl.

I have been shocked and deeply saddened in recommending this video to find out that more people than I could possibly have imagined do not even know who John Lewis is. He was one of the bravest leaders of the civil rights movement, arrested more than 40 times, and nearly beaten to death by a white racist weilding a metal pipe.

Yet Lewis remains steadfast in his commitment to nonviolence, as he notes in his references to Gandhi and Martin Luther King.

Watch this video. Listen to the words. Look at the face and the gestures of a man who has taken some of the worst abuse that the racists of this country could dish out (short of assassination) and yet he keeps on keeping on.

Watching this speech, and feeling my heart catch in my throat more than once, I wonder how it is that his fellow members of Congress could look on (yes, I know, most of them probably weren't even in the chamber) and not come away changed.

Watch this video, and send it to as many people as possible.

by richardbelldc