Tuesday, June 14, 2005

THE DISHONOR OF WOUNDED KNEE

Dear Reader:

Yesterday, the United States Senate took the belated measure of apologizing to the African American descendants of the victims of lynching. Combined with the case of Emmett Till and the reopening of the case of the 1964 KKK murder of three civil rights volunteers, it is a powerful reminder that justice will be heard and the wounds of great wrongs require decades, even centuries to heal.

It has recently come to my attention that there were 18 Medals of Honor awarded to the soldiers and officers of the Seventh Calvary for their participation in the Massacre of Wounded Knee. I need not recount the events of that massacre. They are burned into the conscience of every man and woman who has studied the history of this nation. I am certain you are fully acquainted with them and feel, as I do, that a greater crime has never been committed on American soil.

The wounds of Wounded Knee have never healed. Perhaps it is too much to ask for reparations (I do not believe so) but I have no doubt that no individual of conscience can possibly believe that those medals should still be honored.

In recent years, our government has apologized for past crimes, including the internment of Japanese Americans during WW II. Presidents have apologized for our nation's exploitation of blacks as slaves. Our nation has never apologized for genocide.

I ask your assistance in contacting your representatives in Congress to affect a simple act of atonement: Repeal the Medals of Dishonor. Let the healing begin.

Sincerely,

Jack Random - Author of Ghost Dance Insurrection

Contact: J.D. Kotrla-Chipps (aka Buffalo Man) www.woptura.com

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