Kathleen Tinley’s Speech at Omaha’s Global Day of Action
March 19, 2005
I mourn. I mourn for my uncle who was killed on September 11, 2001 in the World Trade Center and for the thousands of others who were killed that day in New York, Washington D.C., and Pennsylvania
I also mourn for the people who killed them and who took their own lives on that day, the people who were so blinded in desperation that they saw mass murder as their best option.
I mourn for our soldiers: for those who died fighting and those who have survived yet lost a piece of themselves doing what we pay them to do.
I mourn for the people of Iraq, especially for the people I was fortunate enough to meet when I travelled to their country two months before the start of the war. I will never know their destiny; I won’t know who survived and who perished, so I mourn for all of them.
I mourn the death of a dream. This dream was given life in the weeks following September 11th when we experienced sympathy and condolences and support from strangers around the world. They gave me hope that our country could learn from our suffering and that we would seek healing and solutions rather than rage out looking for revenge. That dream died and its tomb was sealed when I heard President Bush declare victory in a war that we fight to this day.
However, today, as I prepare for Easter next weekend, as I look out at all of you gathered here and think of the others attending similar events to commemorate this second anniversary of our war, a new dream is given life. You give me hope that we can find strength and preseverance to demand that our leaders stop cowering behind gunfire and start guiding us down the difficult road to peace. I have hope that we can rise out of our history of violence.
I have hope for resurrection.
