CoodeIndigo

Originally published on the Pax Christi International Peace Stories blog, May 8, 2021 On January 6, [2021] many watched in horror as thousands of people stormed the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C. in a furious, chaotic, and deeply misguided attempt to nullify the November 2020 election of Joe Biden as president of the United States. The insurrectionists broke windows and furniture, swarmed offices, menaced members of Congress and their staff, stole property and inflicted a sense of terror on those who work in and near the U.S. Capitol. In the aftermath, five people were dead, at least 140 injured, and unknown more were traumatized. The January 6 attack was violent: in attitude, language, action, and result. Rather than stabilizing our democracy it has painfully accelerated social divisions. The United States has a history and culture of nonviolent demonstrations, most of which are peaceful. As the nation’s seat of power, Washington, D.C. is accustomed to protestors, both ...

When I was growing up, a bunch of boys lived in our neighborhood: my brothers Joe and Phillip were part of a pack that included Ricky Ray; Donny and Jimmy Loftus; Timmy Nave (who was the only bilingual one of the group because his parents were deaf and he used ASL); Billy, Joey and Paul Breen (whose fourth brother, John, was too young to join the play); and the star of N. Wilson Boulevard, Kurt Page. For a brief time, Kurt was famous, at least in Nashville and the SEC football world: in the early 1980s,  he was the quarterback for Vanderbilt University  (still holds the record for most yards passed). My Kurt Page scrapbook is around here somewhere. All or some combination of these boys, along with my father, often played basketball and baseball together, and some of them (not our father) played with their Johnny West and Geronimo action figures. (Remind me to tell the story of when I and my Barbie doll were invited to join the activity; it was the scene of my first feminist ou...