Voice your support for Mary Kelly

national | miscellaneous | news report Thursday January 30, 2003 14:46 by Eoin Dubsky - Refueling Peace info at refuelingpeace dot org 087-6941060

Below is a Letter to the Editor I've sent out today. If you support what Mary did and you have the time, please take the time to speak up about it where you work and live, and through the media. After the letter you'll see the words to a song written by Shannon Smy of radical folk group 'Seize the Day' (http://www.seizetheday.org/) for a similar action in England a few years ago.

Dear Editor,

I want to commend Mary Kelly for her courageous and imaginative,
nonviolent, open and accountable act of disarmament at Shannon Airport
yesterday morning.

The killing of innocent people is wrong. This basic principle can help
us to think more clearly about our part in the planned invasion, and the
on-going bombardment and sanctions against Iraq.

Virginia Woolf says in a booklet I found on Greenham Common: "We can
best help you prevent war not by repeating your words and following your
methods but by finding new words and creating new methods."

The calls to active nonviolence and disarmament "Love your enemy" and
"Beat swords into ploughshares" aren't new by any means. But in a time
when the war drums from Washington and London are almost deafening,
perhaps it takes the clanging sound of a mother's hammer against a
warplane at Shannon Airport to remind us who and what we stand for.

In peace,

Eoin Dubsky

************ With My Hammer ************

By Shannon Smy

You who see injustice all around,
Yet you haven’t got the courage or the will to fight or stand your ground.
We who see but are too scared,
There are not enough of us prepared.
To put our lives at risk time and again.
And then comes a drop of rain to the parched lips of a world that needs to feel hope again.

“We are dying as a people and a nation, A third of our people have been killed in 21 years of illegal occupation.
10 UN resolutions requesting Indonesia to withdraw – they chose to ignore”
And a woman cries, if you are really human you’d stop them sending these weapons to our shores.

Chorus:

With my hammer I break the chain I will not remain in silence.
I will stand and I will defend my right to fight against violence.
No prison can contain the freedom that we gain when we move through fear.

The laws of our civilised land are quite clear,
Selling weapons to dictators who murder starve, rape and torture is illegal.
But there is timber there is oil, on Indonesian soil and there’s money to be made form the arms trade.
‘Our boys need jobs’ you shout it from the rooftops but not one word of the lives lost or destroyed.
I cannot believe, you continue to deceive yourselves in this way,
All the people that you pay to make the jet fighters.

(Chorus)

To think to plan it took a year, to build trust to work through fear.
Then at 3am on a cold January morning at BAE Wharton,
No one saw them no one gave the warning.
Hawk jet ZH955 came alive to the sound of singing hammers, the hanging of banners, the scattering of seeds and ashes on its wings,
And the women waited to see – What justice brings.
For £2.4 million damage done - £13 million for a new one.
“ We are not martyrs or heroines,
We owe so much to our friends,
Who held our courage in their hands.”

(Chorus)

And after half a year in jail they came before a court of law
and the truth the jury heard and saw stunned them into silence.
Then when the verdict came…NOT GUILTY!!
Justice had been done the celebrating could begin again – Laughing, dancing praying weeping crying.
And in East Timor they laughed and danced and cried some more.
And as the seeds of hope begin to settle on the ground a gentle rain begins to fall.

With my hammer I break the chain I will not remain in silence.
I will stand and I will defend my right to fight against violence. (x3)
No prison can contain the freedom that we gain when we move through fear.

With my hammer I broke the chain – I did not remain in silence

**************************************
Listen to the song in RealAudio and read more about the action here:
http://www.seizetheday.org/hammer.htm