May Day Greetings from Joseph Gerson

05.05.2007

Dear Lalit Friends,

It has been my privilege to meet and work with members of Lalit in the course of our efforts to support the people of Diego Garcia so that they can return to their homes from which they were so cruelly and wrongfully removed, and to win the withdrawal of U.S. foreign military bases so that others may live in peace and the people of the United States can live secure lives consistent with our professed democratic values.

I send you Labor Day greetings from around the world where, like you, people will be using May Day to talk to one another, to plan, to rally and to march to build that other world, or at least a better society and the more secure lives that we know are possible.

In communities across the United States, organized labor and immigrant workers and their families are coming together today to reaffirm their dignity, to insist that our rights be respected, and to build the political power we need to transform vision and hopes into realities and true security. In other communities we are focusing on the crimes of the U.S. war in Iraq, its nuclear weapons and militarism in order to build popular pressure to change U.S. policies. We trust that you are doing much the same.

The teachers who wrote the Biblical Proverbs taught that "A people without a vision will perish." Martin Luther King, Jr. told us that he had a dream, and he shared it with us: that with love, courage and organizing we can bend the arc of history toward justice and true human security and liberation.


May you use Labor Day to dream, speak, and build with love. Together we make the road that we walk.


With friendship and solidarity,

Joseph Gerson

Director of Programs
American Friends Service Committee