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BOLGIA 11:
Exhuming Atticus Finch
Recently, there is renewed interest in Harper Lee and her seminal Pulitzer Prize winning book, TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD. Not only has a new biography of Harper Lee just been released (MOCKINGBIRD) but Ms. Lee is on the verge of breaking her decades long self imposed J.D. Salinger like silence. The confluence of these events is more than just a day in the park for literary junkies.
TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD, and the great film that spread its story even further, is a bar by which we can ask ourselves “How far have we come?” The lead character, Atticus Finch, is a small town Southern lawyer who defends an African American man, Tom Robinson, against false charges that he raped a white woman. The all white jury convicts Tom and he is subsequently shot “while trying to escape.” Atticus lost his case, but he is the only man in the story with the moral courage to stand up for what is right and what is true. He is the only man who honestly pursues justice and equality – two words that appear on the paper of our Constitution but very few other places. He tells his children that it is “a sin to kill a mockingbird” because all they do is sing and spread music. Tom Robinson is such a man. He is the mockingbird and it is our nation’s collective sin that he is falsely accused, convicted, and murdered for a crime he did not commit. Men like Atticus Finch must fight our battles for us because so few of us have the actual courage and resolve to stand up to the entrenched powers of racial injustice, exploitation, fear, and institutionalized cowardice. People like Martin Luther King, Robert F. Kennedy, Mahatma Gandhi, Mother Theresa, His Holiness the XIV Dali Lama, and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn – just to name a few of those resisted the easy path of violence and moral capitulation. To our great shame, the list is not very long.
Atticus Finch represents the ideal modern American – a wise and patient parent: a man of intellect, moral strength, confidence, courage, and strong sense of justice. These are not just words, but the fabric of his being, and thus the true fabric of our nation. He is the man our country SHOULD be. Today, as we are plunged into a great global crisis that I believe very few people truly understand, we are desperately in need for some action, no matter how small, to cut through all the toxic propaganda of our media sphere and remind us that as a nation, and as a species, we can still produce the kind of people that the fictional Atticus Finch represents.
I have found 159 of them. They are the brave souls who bucked all of society and “conventional wisdom” to vote NO on the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution of 2002. For their moral courage, their peers, our press, and our citizens punished them. They were called traitors and cowards. Some were voted out of office. Three and a half years later their wisdom, foresight, and innate understanding of real justice tower above their critics like giants. When our flag draped coffins arrive during the cover of night at Dover Air Force Base, out of sight and mind like refuse flushed down a toilet, these are the only individuals who can say that their hands are not drenched in blood. When bombs go off in Bagdad killing innocent men, women, and children, these are the individuals who can say that they tried to stop it. When our troops inevitably commit atrocities in the war zone, these are the individuals who can say, “Violence creates violence.” As the Middle East erupts into flames from end to end, and we sit on the precipice of a quite literal World War III, these are the individuals that history will record as being the only men and women in the most powerful country in world who, like Atticus Finch, knew what was right, moral, and just, and had the courage and wisdom to stand up and declare it to be so. If there is anyone left, that is, to record history.
United States Senate – NAYS (23)
Akaka (D-HI)
Bingaman (D-NM)
Boxer (D-CA)
Byrd (D-WV)
Chafee (R-RI)
Conrad (D-ND)
Corzine (D-NJ)
Dayton (D-MN)
Durbin (D-IL)
Feingold (D-WI)
Graham (D-FL)
Inouye (D-HI)
Jeffords (I-VT)
Kennedy (D-MA)
Leahy (D-VT)
Levin (D-MI)
Mikulski (D-MD)
Murray (D-WA)
Reed (D-RI)
Sarbanes (D-MD)
Stabenow (D-MI)
Wellstone (D-MN)
Wyden (D-OR)
United States House of Representatives – NAYS (133)
Abercrombie
Allen
Baca
Baird
Baldacci
Baldwin
Barrett
Becerra
Blumenauer
Bonior
Brady (PA)
Brown (FL)
Brown (OH)
Capps
Capuano
Cardin
Carson (IN)
Clay
Clayton
Clyburn
Condit
Conyers
Costello
Coyne
Cummings
Davis (CA)
Davis (IL)
DeFazio
DeGette
Delahunt
DeLauro
Dingell
Doggett
Doyle
Duncan
Eshoo
Evans
Farr
Fattah
Filner
Frank
Gonzalez
Gutierrez
Hastings (FL)
Hilliard
Hinchey
Hinojosa
Holt
Honda
Hooley
Hostettler
Houghton
Inslee
Jackson (IL)
Jackson-Lee (TX)
Johnson, E. B.
Jones (OH)
Kaptur
Kildee
Kilpatrick
Kleczka
Kucinich
LaFalce
Langevin
Larsen (WA)
Larson (CT)
Leach
Lee
Levin
Lewis (GA)
Lipinski
Lofgren
Maloney (CT)
Matsui
McCarthy (MO)
McCollum
McDermott
McGovern
McKinney
Meek (FL)
Meeks (NY)
Menendez
Millender-McDonald
Miller, George
Mollohan
Moran (VA)
Morella
Nadler
Napolitano
Neal
Oberstar
Obey
Olver
Owens
Pallone
Pastor
Paul
Payne
Pelosi
Price (NC)
Rahall
Rangel
Reyes
Rivers
Rodriguez
Roybal-Allard
Rush
Sabo
Sanchez
Sanders
Sawyer
Schakowsky
Scott
Serrano
Slaughter
Snyder
Solis
Stark
Strickland
Stupak
Thompson (CA)
Thompson (MS)
Tierney
Towns
Udall (CO)
Udall (NM)
Velazquez
Visclosky
Waters
Watson (CA)
Watt (NC)
Woolsey
Wu
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