"The Exception to the Rulers"

When I was pregnant, I asked Amy Goodman to sign her book "The Exception to the Rulers" to my unborn little girl, and she did. My children have often played with blocks or colored during her show Democracy Now! on public radio. Such things make up the noise of our lives, and are natural to them- drumming, windchimes, the sound of Sesame Street. At a certain age, I became prudish with some noise, like my favorite Ani DiFranco songs that I just did not feel like explaining..at the moment.
One morning I realized that my oldest was at an age where she could listen to and understand the inputs of our home. The discussions among adults,the radio programs, even to ask about a book or a magazine. She can now read comments by her mother in the paper and wonder what her friends- or worse- their mothers- will say about them. She is old enough to know that her mother expresses opinions a bit freely. She is old enough to see that other mothers do not act like her own. She
On this, we need to test ourselves and consider the messages for our daughters- be a thinker, but keep your mouth shut? Express what is popular? Express for social currency? Question, but never make a thoughtful leap with all that you learn?
Do we continue the defeatist "who cares" talk in response to their anger or outrage? Do we tell our girls to ignore their feelings, and convince them that if they ignore the things that nag at them, their conscience will eventually become numb, their spirits compliant, their voices reticent?
I highlighted sections in this book for my children, as I do with others, imagining a day when they will reach for it, curious, and perhaps flip through it near the shelf. I used to keep my books pristine but as my mind became chaotic, so did my reading material. I imagine they will reach for many things when given the freedom to mentally roam, and have no delusions that books will be an easy sell over television and itunes. But children learn what they live- someone will give them their cues- you, Madison Ave, neighbors- a combination probably.

"Never doubt for a moment that a small group of committed,thoughtful people can make a difference. Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has." Margaret Mead said this more than half a century ago. In the troubled times in which we now live- when corporate power sometimes seems invincible, the silence in mainstream media seems deafening, and true democracy seems like a far off dream- where do we look for hope?
Try death row in Illinois. In January 2003, Governor George Ryan,a conservative Republican who co-chaired the 2000 Bush presidential campaign in Illinois, commuted the sentences of 163 death row inmates and pardoned 4 more. "Because the Illinois death penalty system is arbitrary and capricious- and therefore immoral- I no longer shall tinker with the machinery of death," declared this rock-ribbed conservative.
Ryan did not take this brave and controversial action on a whim. It grew out of years of lonely and thankless grassroots activism against the death penalty. It happened because mothers of men on death row never gave up the struggle to exonerate their sons." p. 316 "The Exception to the Rulers" by Amy Goodman