News Day

"My greatest political asset, which professional politicians fear,
is my mouth, out of which come all kinds of things one shouldn’t always
discuss for reasons of political expediency."

Shirley Chisholm made her own way, remaining, as her book title proudly
asserts, "unbought and unbossed" throughout her political
life. The first black woman elected to Congress (1968), she was a founding
member of the Black Congressional Caucus and also ran for president
in 1972, a symbolic move that she hoped would pave the way for "a
black, a woman or a Jew" to be taken seriously as future presidential
candidates. During 14 years in Congress, she opposed the Vietnam War,
supported the War on Poverty and remained an activist and a fighter
against racism and sexism.

Some Shirley Chisholm quotes:

"When morality comes up against profit, it is seldom profit that
loses."

"The United States was said not to be ready to elect a Catholic
to the Presidency when Al Smith ran in the 1920’s. But Smith’s nomination
may have helped pave the way for the successful campaign John F. Kennedy
waged in 1960. Who can tell? What I hope most is that now there will
be others who will feel themselves as capable of running for high political
office as any wealthy, good-looking white male."

"In the end antiblack, antifemale, and all forms of discrimination
are equivalent to the same thing – antihumanism."

"Congress seems drugged and inert most of the time… its idea
of meeting a problem is to hold hearings or, in extreme cases, to appoint
a commission"

Have a new year
because
180,000 people in Aceh, Indonesia, India, Thailand will not have
a new year
because
uncounted Iraqi children starved to death in the old year of liberation and
will never see
a new year
because
more than a thousand U.S. soldiers died in the desert without
a new year,
because eleven-year-old Karly Johana Suárez Torres was accidentally shot
to death by Colombian soldiers and Guatemalan union leader Julio Rolando Raquec
was assassinated on purpose and nameless, numberless Haitian prisoners were
killed by rioting guards, all in December, all of whom will never see
a new year.

Because you can,
have a new year.

Have the new year they cannot —
seize this year, bite it, chew it, swallow it, make it part of you
grab onto this new year and ride it, cowgirl,
squeeze this new year with both hands and mold it into something for yourself,
something steel as girders of a new building,
something fiery as molten sun at end of ocean day,
something soft as cat fur and with claws to climb
out of the depth of despair.
Have this new year.