Home
Archive
Columnists
Video
Blogs
Discuss
About
Search
Donate
Advertise
Advertisement
Advertisement
Advertisement
Advertisement
Register to Vote: Rock the Vote, powered by Working Assets Wireless
Advertisement
  • AlterNetYour turn

Support AlterNet
Do you value the information you're getting from AlterNet? Please show your support with a tax-deductible donation.


Feedback
Tell us how we're doing.

Sherman Alexie, Peacenik

By Geov Parrish, WorkingForChange.com. Posted February 14, 2003.


Spokane Indian poet and filmmaker Sherman Alexie was front and center at a Seattle antiwar demonstration on Saturday.

Share and save this post:
Digg iconDelicious iconReddit iconFark iconYahoo! iconNewsvine! iconFacebook iconNewsTrust icon

More stories by Geov Parrish

Get AlterNet in
your mailbox!

 
Advertisement

On Saturday, the latest and largest antiwar rallies protesting the Folly of Dubya took place across the United States and around the world.

In Seattle, at one of the hundreds of such rallies, at the protest podium -- for the first time in his life -- stood...

Sherman Alexie?

Alexie's latest projects have been films: writing "Smoke Signals," and then writing, directing, and producing "The Business of Fancydancing." He also continues to churn out poetry, short stories, and novels. He has taken the unlikeliest of paths: a poet from the Spokane Indian reservation, via the isolated ag-college town of Pullman, Washington, and on to novels, screenplays, movies, fame, and more poetry. Throughout, his work has always had a strong undercurrent of political themes. But it also had humor, sadness, love, triumph, anger, despair, courage, and dozens of other attributes that make for great art -- attributes notably missing from most anti-war rallies.

So, Sherman: Why? Why something as decidedly, well, clichéd as an anti-war rally? And why now?

"I think we're near, we're close to, living under a dictatorship," Alexie said, in a phone conversation several days before the demonstration. "I'm afraid that if we don't stand up to policies now, whatever they may be...." His voice trails off. "This is not just about war."

One of the factors inspiring Alexie -- but only one -- was the fiasco that ensued when Sam Hamill, a Port Townsend, Wash. poet and founder of the highly respected Copper Canyon Press, was invited to a Feb. 12 White House symposium hosted by First Lady Laura Bush that was to honor the works of Emily Dickinson, Langston Hughes, and Walt Whitman. Hamill decided that his only ethical choice was to carry a message of opposition to war from himself and fellow poets. He e-mailed some 50 colleagues asking support.

The e-mail exploded across the Internet, and thousands weighed in. At that point, rather than receive Hamill's mountain of e-mails and letters, the First Lady cancelled the symposium, declaring that it "would be inappropriate to turn what is intended to be a literary event into a political forum."

Sherman snorts.

"I'm certainly not going to listen to the warmongering of a President, Vice President, and Secretary of Defense who didn't serve in the military, who did everything they could to not go into war. If they didn't want to go to war [themselves], I'm not sure why others should."

"I'd also feel a lot better if any one of them would stand up and admit they funded and trained Saddam Hussein, if someone would stand up and apologize. Someone should stand up and say: `We trained him.'"

"The man [Bush] has not read enough books to have a developed moral sense. It's the un- and under-educated who speak in moral absolutes. The fewer books you read, the easier it is to become fundamental. I'm not going to listen to a President who only reads one book pass judgment on other people who read one book.


Digg!

Liked this story? Get top stories in your inbox each week from AlterNet! Sign up now »

Obama vs. McCain: Who Won? Short Takes on the Debate
Election 2008: Liliana Segura, Don Hazen, Joshua Holland, David Sirota, Jill Tubman, Arianna Huffington, Andrew Sullivan and others share their thoughts.
AlterNet. October 8, 2008.
Is This Election the Major Historical Turning Point It Seems to Be? Yes
Election 2008: A small election victory won't drastically turn around any of the darker challenges our country faces -- only a massive victory can do that.
By Chalmers Johnson, Tomdispatch.com. October 8, 2008.
Top 5 Things That Might Keep You From Voting
Election 2008: Hurry up and register -- it might already be too late in your state.
By Allison H. Fine, Huffington Post. October 8, 2008.

Advertisement