Dear President-elect Obama:
A Great Act of Mercy by you can help heal the still raw wounds of Indian people and their continuing confrontation with the 'Dominant Society' of the United States. I don’t know if you know the Leonard Peltier case personally; nor will I argue it here. Please talk to Secretary Bill Richardson and Sen. Inouye about this great injustice now in its 33rd year; they both know it well. Leonard was 31 when he was framed; he's now 64. A poll a couple of years ago asked thousands of people, "Who Is the Greatest American Indian in History?" The winner, yes, was Leonard Peltier. Crazy Horse, as I recall, was 2nd; Sitting Bull, 3rd. All Lakota ('Sioux') incidentally.
Mr. President-elect, I ask from my deepest heart that you grant a brief audience to me and Chief Arvol Looking Horse, 19th-Generation Keeper of the Sacred White Buffalo Pipe of the Great Lakota Nation, so that we may deliver a message to you on behalf of millions of good souls around the earth who plead for Leonard’s freedom, who see Leonard’s freedom as The Sign that Democracy and Love and Prayer and Justice still have a meaning in America.
I ask to read to you from Leonard’s book PRISON WRITINGS: MY LIFE IS MY SUN DANCE, of which I am privileged to be the editor. A wondrous stage play MY LIFE IS MY SUN DANCE has been produced from Leonard's words to rave audiences, and we will be delighted to bring the soon-to-tour words-and-music production to the venue of your choice, for you to experience the power and poetry and compassion of it. It wrings the soul.
I would welcome the presence of VP-elect Biden, Sec.-designate Hillary Clinton (and Bill, of course), Gov. Bill Richardson, Sen. Inouye, your new FBI director and any other persons you'd like to be on hand. I also ask to have Leonard Peltier himself standing beside me in the Oval Office as I read his words—words Leonard would read to you himself if his locked jaw would allow him to. Leonard also asks me to invite Mumia Abu Jamal--another political prisoner, to whom we also ask you to grant executive clemency. Freeing these two men would be an act of intrinsic greatness, I daresay a Holy Act.
Mr. President-elect, we await your strong hand in bringing these enormous and glaring injustices to an end.
Respectfully,
/ (signed) Harvey Arden
Washington, DC
12/23/2008
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Now that the anti-science, superstition-based initiative presidency ends, we need several public works science Manhattan projects to make us great again and boost us out of this Grotesque Depression. First we must provide free advertising-based wireless internet to everyone to end land line monopolies. Then we must criscross the land with high speed rail. Because bovine flatulence is the major source of greenhouse gases, we must develop home growable microbes to provide all of our protein. Then we must create microbes which turn our sewage and waste into fuel right at home. This will end energy monopoly by putting fuel in our hands. We must address that most illness starts from behavior, especially from parents. Since paranoid schizophrenia is the cause of racism, bigotry, homelessness, terrorism, ignorance, exploitation and criminality, we must provide put the appropriate medications, like lithium, in the water supply and require dangerous wingnuts who refuse free mental health care to be implanted with drug release devices. CHurches should be licensed to reduce supersition and all clergy dealing with small children should be psychiatrically monitored to prevent molesting. Osama bin Laden and Timothy McVeigh were the ultimate superstition based initiatives. Widen navigation straits (Gibraltar, Suez, Malacca, Danube, Panama and Hellspont) with deep nukes to prevent war. In order to fund this we must nationalize the entire financial, electrical and transportation system and extinguish the silly feudal notion that each industry should be regulated by its peers. Technology mandates a transformation of tax subsidies from feudal forecloseable debt to risk sharing equity. Real estate and insurance, the engines of feudalism, must be brought under the Federal Reserve so we may replace all buildings with hazardous materials to provide public works. Insects, flooding and fire spread asbestos, lead and mold which prematurely disables the disadvantaged. Disposable manufactured housing assures children are not prematurely disabled and disadvantaged. Because feudalism is the threat to progress everywhere, we must abolish large land holdings by farmers, foresters or religions and instead make all such large landholding part of the forest service so our trees may diminish greenhouse gases. We must abolish executive pay and make sure all employees in a company are all paid equally. We must abolish this exploitative idea of trade and monopoly and make every manufactured disposable cottage self sufficient through the microbes we invent.
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