Jeannette Rankin: The First U.S. Congresswoman Was Also Antiwar – Updated

24 Wednesday Sep 2014

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The first woman ever elected to the U.S. Congress was Montana’s Jeannette Rankin. Her most noteworthy feat was her opposition to war. Then, very much like now, being against the war was seen as a treason.

The first U.S. congresswoman Jeannette Rankin.

In an essay she wrote in 1958, she explained her votes against World War I in 1917 and against World War II after the country had been attacked at Pearl Harbor in 1941.

While she did have some support the first time, she stood alone before congress the second time around.

According to her own account, she would not be able to face her remaining days in office if she had not voted against the war. In her remarks after a long investigation into data available then, Rankin claimed the war was nothing but an attempt to blame the Japanese for the aggression the United States had started by imposing economic sanctions against them.

The very first U.S. congresswoman, a Republican, was vehemently against war and dedicated to bringing details the administration would rather keep under wraps to light no matter what. Her decision to stay true to her role as a representative of her people was all she needed to act honorably.

In 1958 she said:

And how much do the people and even the members of Congress know about the moves now being made by our government or other governments which may lead to another war? Our being kept in ignorance arouses my apprehensions today as it did more than forty years ago when World War I burst upon my world.

It breaks my heart this is still true today. ~

Quote taken from: We Who Dared to Say No to War – American Antiwar Writing from 1812 to Now, Edited by Murray Polner & Thomas E. Woods, Jr.

For the soldier I caught watching the birds

14 Thursday Jun 2012

Posted by Alice Salles in Dying, Living, True story?

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camouflage, soldiers, war

They will assume they’re quite aware of what you thought.

Reshape the content and alter the tone without shifting the words. They will use that shot of your weary eyes and mention how fine you looked when you smiled. They will tell your story in a matter-of-factly format and use your rise and fall to illustrate recent statistics. They will cry you a river and give your family two minutes of air time, run a segment on the ever-rising suicide rates and what the president has recently declared regarding such matters but they will never know what you felt like.

They will never imagine how you smiled satisfactorily the day you learned to watch the wind playing with the sand over there, across the oceans and lands you turned up to be. How you learned to use the blend landscapes to enhance the outreach of your fantasies, how you learned the camouflage in your fatigues was a joke and fighting grounds is nothing but green dots on a black screen.

They will never learn how you felt like when you heard the sound of your Skype account on and the alerts you received when your lover logged on. They can’t fathom how you managed to stay calm every time you saw your little one’s eyes blinking at yours on the screen of your laptop and how you always knew you were going to make it.

You were so sure.

They will reform you and reinvent you until your name is forgotten. The camouflage will remain a joke and the reasons behind your own private war will never be disclosed. The data locked away in the heavy safe of your aspirations will never be claimed and the things you’ve seen will stay memories no one will ever revisit.

Truth is they will assume what you thought and how you felt and sometimes they may get it almost right, but still

They will never know about the heavy peacefulness you experienced while watching pigeons fighting for bread that very day you left home to step into the abyss of somebody else’s misconception, with all the reasonable doubt in the world branded like a dark tattoo on your chest.

But I will, soldier. I’ll always do.