Time to Renew My Passport, and Good Timing Too...



Because I need a break in this abusive relationship with my country. I just keep trying to love it and it just keeps getting scarier. You've all heard about the guy arrested for wearing a peace t-shirt at Crossgates Mall in Albany by now, right? Well I just read that a man was arrested in New Mexico a month ago for saying that George W. Bush is out of control in a goddamn chatroom. This same article tells me that Bernadette Devlin is no longer welcome here in the US.


I helped with publicity for the group that brought Bernadette Devlin to speak at my college in January 1992. I skipped the annual Pro-Choice Roe V. Wade demonstration in Washington just to stay home and hear her speak. That year it was a pretty historical humungous dykey feminist demo I passed up, too. But I was appalled that more students didn't stay to hear Bernadette. After hearing her speech I was ready to move to North Ireland and join the struggle for independence. To me, she's right up there with Marilyn Waring. They both responded to conservative repression by running for a government seat and winning- Marilyn as a teenager, and Bernadette as a 21 year old. But Bernadette edges out Marilyn in the category of sheer strength by - as a young wife and mother - winning a seat as an MP and then becoming a political prisoner - while still retaining her seat in British Parliament.



Here is a short bio of Bernadette from the History Channel:

Bernadette Devlin was one of the most electrifying figures in the movement for Irish unification in the late 20th century. Elected to the British Parliament from Northern Ireland in 1969, she was at age 21 the youngest-ever British MP. She was a stirring speaker, winning respect in Westminster despite her age and controversial politics. In August 1969, she was arrested during the ''Battle of the Bogside,'' a riot in Londonderry that marked the beginning of 30 years of armed resistance to the British occupation of Northern Ireland. Convicted of inciting a riot in 1970, she spent four months in prison while still an MP. After "Bloody Sunday" in 1972, in which 13 Catholic demonstrators in Londonderry were killed by British soldiers, she assaulted Reginald Maudling, the Home Secretary, in Parliament, calling him a "murdering hypocrite." In 1973, she took her husband's last name, becoming Bernadette McAliskey. She left Parliament the following year but continued to be politically active in Northern Ireland. In 1981, she and her husband were shot by members of a Protestant paramilitary group at their farmhouse near Belfast. Bernadette was struck by nine bullets but eventually recovered and returned to her activism. An unabashed Irish Republican, she said of the 1994 Irish Republican Army (IRA) cease-fire, "The war is over and the good guys lost."