Ray McGovern, cont.

I think the time calls for prophecy. I think we all, all of us in the Abrahamic tradition, come out of a tradition of prophets. The 8th century prophets, of course, were a little eccentric. Take Jeremiah, for example. He went around for, I think it was, three years stark naked. Now exegetes - without any humor - say now it's not clear he was always stark naked, just during liturgical services. Well, whichever, you know, you can't let the man off the hook. What was he saying? What was he saying? I think he was saying. "Look, I strip myself. You don't listen to me, so I strip myself of my clothes to show you that you are stripped of the vision given you by Yahweh - a vision of justice and shalom, and your nakedness is far worse than mine."

We all share that vision. We just need to do something to show that. I think we need to do a lot more than we have been doing. I think we need to spread the word around. I am not at all as sanguine as Sy Hersh and still less than Senator Levin that the press has come around. I don't see it. I like to hope it, but I don't see much change. And, so it's really up to us… to us to have the imagination to do things. Now, like what? Well, that's for all of us to figure out in community, in small groups. But when you hear an enlightened voice, when you hear an imaginative idea--like I heard when Jennifer Harbury sent me am email and said, "Ray, you come on over. We have something we're planning." I went right over that day. She said, "We have these 16 orange suits, and we've saved one for you. We're going to march the halls of Congress. We're going to have a press conference first. We'll all look like that iconic vision of the Guantanamo prisoner." They had it all figured out. The National Capitol police didn't have a dress code. If you weren't handing out any material, and if you didn't have slogans all over you, you could wear whatever you want. And so, Jennifer and Diana arranged for a press conference in the Methodist building right on the Hill there. We all were already infiltrated into the Rayburn and other buildings. But Jennifer was having a press conference, and then she turned it over to others and said I have to leave now, and on the way over she called the Capitol police and said, "We're having a peaceful demonstration. We're not going to do anything unlawful, but we're going to be here and there." She told them where we were going to be, and she hung up and went through security and went to the ladies room and got her orange jumpsuit on. It was an incredible, incredible thing. The people were just stunned to see us marching around. Nobody made fun. Everybody kind of looked and said, "Wow." I was up and down in the Rayburn cafeteria, and they couldn't arrest us. The police came up to me and said, "Are you alone?" I said, "Yes." They said OK.

So what I'm saying is, get yourself hooked up with imaginative people. They usually happen to be women for some strange reason, and then do what they tell you, and you'll come up with some really neat ideas.

We can do things like that, and more powerful things as well. I'd like to close simply by citing that quote from Dante that JFK liked to use: "The hottest places in Hell are reserved for those who remain neutral in times of crisis." I Google'd Hell just last night, and it's hotter in Hell than it is in Crawford, Texas, in August, and that's pretty hot. So let's put our shoulders into it, let's put our bodies into it, or else we can just go to Hell.