I first want to thank you for inviting me here today.  I am honored to have been asked to address this congregation.  My name is Deborah McMurtrie.  I am a former community columnist for the Centre Daily Times.  I am not a politician.  I’m not even a professional writer.   I am an average American who has become increasingly alarmed at the transgressions committed against the people of this country by government and corporate leaders who have used our democracy against us.

     The same people who have deemed the very word liberal as a poisonous oath against freedom.  While at the same time, applying the principles of liberalism to benefit those very few at the top of the economic heap – at the expense of the poor and middle class. These are some of the views that landed me on the editorial pages of the Centre Daily Times.

     In 1998 I wrote two letters to the editor which, being rather long, were published as “my views”, the longer, editorial-type essays submitted by some readers.  The first one dealt with my dismay at the increasing corporatization of America and how we consumers helped companies’ bottom lines by “self-serving” ourselves as unpaid employees at gas stations, convenience stores and supermarkets.  Business was becoming “lean and mean” only with our unwitting cooperation.

    The second letter came about as a result of the media response to Bill Clinton’s marital infidelity.  I pointed out that what he did was repugnant and disappointing but certainly not surprising.  Extramarital affairs are practically de regueur in congress.  Newt Gingrich himself, then Speaker of the House, had to step down to avoid wide media exposure of his own affair with an aide.   And in fact, Dennis Hastert was chosen as his successor, not because of his unique talents, but because he was the only republican candidate who was not having an affair at the time.

     This situation was about men behaving abominably.  But powerful hypocrites acted all aghast as if such behavior had never happened before in human history.  And there was much wailing by the radical right about the loss of morality and family values.  All the while tabloid-style sex education was presented to our children on the front pages of every newspaper.  Incidentally, I don’t recall any breaches of national security or anyone losing his or her life as a result of the Lewinsky affair.  A result I do notice, however, is a tawdry sexual revolution of sorts featuring lascivious TV shows and fashions for young women that don’t leave much to the imagination.

     Bill Reader, who was the opinion-page editor of the CDT then, called me saying he liked the Clinton column.  I had written exactly what he had planned to say in an editorial.  And would I like to write a column once a month.  Thus began my brief career in journalism.

     Changes were taking place then at the Centre Daily Times.  The mood on the editorial page was shifting.  Community columnists had been writing about their families and their personal experiences.  And a few readers wrote in to complain, saying they could care less about these writer’s lives and why did they need to be exposed to them.  Two of them stopped writing.  I’m not sure if they were discouraged by the criticism. or just tired of writing columns.  I took one of their places.  My instructions were to write strictly about issues and to keep my personal life out of the column.

     For four years I wrote a monthly column with the point of view of the average, middle-class person outraged by the injustices imposed upon us by a few misguided politicians at the behest of their corporate sponsors.  Bill Reader contacted me often.  To warn me if my subject might generate negative comment, to suggest better ways of communicating my message, or just to remind me to make sure my verbs agreed.  In other words, he edited my column.

     About a year later, he moved on to another job.  After he left, I was on my own.  My only communication with the new opinion page editor was when I e-mailed or called to see if my column was received.  Occasionally, I would be forwarded reader e-mails.  But, looking back, maybe that was when the CDT started to change.  I don’t think the editorial page editor had time to call.  On one of the rare occasions when we spoke, Isaiah Poole, who succeeded Bill Reader, told me he worked 20 hours a week – on what had to be a full time job.  Corporate media had come to town.

     My last column appeared in March 2003.  It was written to protest the war in Iraq.  Early in July, I sent in a column about “freedom” that I thought would be appropriate for publication Sunday July 5.  That column was “lost” by the CDT, which appears to have a very faulty e-mail system.  I re-sent it and was told that it had been forwarded to the new editor.  When I called the new editor, he said he hadn’t received it.  He did tell me, however, that he and the executive editor would be in touch with me in the coming weeks.  I sent the column to him again, but it did not appear the next Sunday.  I never really received an explanation, but I got the message.

     It appears that the mood of the CDT has shifted again.  Gone are all local columns dealing with controversial political issues.  Back are many personal accounts of experiences at such local institutions as Grange Fair and Penn State Football.  The little guy’s perspective on the big picture isn’t there.  Unless he’s lucky enough to have a letter to the editor published.  But is this recent change mere editorial preference by the paper’s management?  Or is it really an industry wide attempt to distract and distance readers from the news?

     I’ve noticed this past summer that local stories have been dominating the front page every day—complete with headlines, a large picture, and enough text to limit the other news stories to the very top and the very bottom of the front page on some days.  And much of this coverage wasn’t local news.  Many were human interest stories that would have been more at home in the C section.  Meanwhile, news about chaos in Iraq and other areas of the Middle East is still mostly reported on page 3 while bad economic news is often buried at the end of the sports section.  Most recently, George W Bush’s admission that Saddam Hussein had no ties to 9/11 was not front page news in the local paper.  It was in a little box on page 9.

     People with little time in the morning who scan the front page headlines for the news may have the warm feeling that all is mostly right with the world, especially here in Centre County.  But all is not right with the world.  And few people seem to be aware of all the facts.

     Since the large corporations were left loose nearly a generation ago due to deregulation, the average American’s life has changed in ways both subtle and obvious.

    From how we perform our jobs to where we send the utility bills.  The quality of our lives has somehow changed.  Materially, many of us have probably never had it better.  But people are less happy at their jobs than they have been in past years.  Early retirement has always been the dream of the legions of workers in the rank and file.  But today, professionals in oft-regarded “rewarding” careers are counting the years, months and days until they can start living again.  And spiritually, we as a nation seem to be groping in the dark.  It’s not for lack of religion.  I am more aware of religion in my daily life today than I was as a child attending parochial school.  But it seems the more prevalent religion is in our society, the more intolerant of others we become.

     At the same time it feels as though we’re losing our sense of national unity.  What is the purpose of the United States today?  What are our common goals?  What are we striving for together?  Is it to make sure that there are Wal-Marts and McDonalds in every town in every country all over the world?  Is that why we’re working so much?  To make sure that multinational corporations can grow larger and larger?  Exploiting poorer and poorer workers not so much so that we can have cheaper goods, but for higher profit margins.  Is it our national purpose to be able to buy expensive new plasma TVs to be able to watch cheaply produced, mind-numbing “reality” programs about pretty people exhibiting the basest of human behavior?  Or cop shows demonstrating that crime doesn’t pay, at least among the proletariat.

     Don’t we as a nation care anymore that a large portion of our fellow citizen don’t have enough food or a decent place to live?  Even as they work at full-time jobs.  And have we all agreed that it’s okay that our government can force us to buy unlabeled bio-engineered fruits and vegetables?  And that the meat grown on corporate factory farms in injected with so much growth hormone that as a result of drinking milk our young daughters are developing breasts as early as age 6?

     Is it a point of national pride that much of our diet includes high fructose corn syrup, a cheap alternative to sugar that has fat-storage triggering effects that the U.S. food industry isn’t telling us about?  Is it a coincidence that Americans are getting fatter and there is a veritable epidemic of diabetes in this country?  Was it the consumer’s idea to super size everything?  Not to worry, though.   There is a prescription drug available, usually at a very high cost, to treat all of our ills.  Whether they occurred naturally or through the machinations of our corporate stewards.

     Are we Americans content with just being consumers?  Replacing perfectly good cars/furniture/clothing because some advertisement says our friends may point and laugh at us if we don’t.  We’re a nation that holds annual community-wide yard sales where there is usually enough merchandise to clothe and furnish a small country.  Have we shopped enough yet?  For merchandise we can’t even produce here because it isn’t cost effective for manufacturers to do so.

     There is a desire in this country that can’t be satisfied by mere acquisition of things.  And a hunger that can’t be slaked by Value Meals and unlimited pasta.  Americans know there is something wrong, but many of them cannot put their finger on it.  They haven’t read about it on the front page, or haven’t seen it on headline news.  We’ve been reduced to the value of what we own, what we are worth financially, not who we are.  We’ve lost the sense of us.  The building of community.  Working for the common good.  And that’s exactly what the corporate interests have set out to do.  If we’re all jealous or resentful or suspicious of one another, we’re likely to work together for change.

     So without our knowledge, thanks to the domestic media, and without a vote, we Americans are feeding the corporate monsters while starving ourselves.  As I speak, private military companies are in Iraq providing food and shelter to our troops.  They are instructing our soldiers on the high tech weapons systems their companies make and sometimes operating those systems themselves.  But their duty is not to secure Iraq’s “freedom” or our “freedom” or whatever the excuse du jour is for our presence there.  Their duty is not even to their customers, the United States Military.  Indeed, if the conditions there get a little too…warlike…they can retreat leaving our troops unsupported by shelter, showers or cooked meals.  And with no repercussions because they’re civilian soldiers.  Their primary duty is to the company’s shareholders.  And their company is Kellogg, Brown and Root, a subsidiary of Haliburton, Vice President Dick Cheney’s former company.  So we get to fund the military and pay the mercenaries who help to fight this dubious war.

     Think about it.  If North Korea or Iran would hire Haliburton to assist their troops in any future faux conflict, we would be fighting a war in which we could end up paying of both sides.  Is it any wonder that this administration needed to create an “axis of evil”?  Is it an wonder that they needed a BIG FEAR like terrorism to make us afraid and thus willing to give up some of our control and our ability to work together?

     A Nation in a state of perpetual anxiety does not make rational decisions.  Especially when those decisions are made in response to the callous manipulation of its emotions.  And a nation in a state of anxiety cannot make rational decisions when it is not told the truth.  We look to the news media for accurate reporting.  But corporate journalism has failed us.  We look to our national leaders to lead.  But they too have failed us.
 
     We are bankrupting our nation and ruining other countries.  We are making our enemies angrier.  Our freedom is being suppressed through the Patriot Act and we are turning against fellow citizens in the name of fighting terrorism.  Terrorism has become the excuse given for freeing the corporate behemoths to complete their goal of governing the planet.  But while terrorists have hurt us and may try to hurt us again, they cannot harm potentially every American citizen the way the Patriot Act can.  Terrorists can send us a painful message, but they cannot take away our liberties and they cannot destroy the principles this country was founded upon.

    But the tide is beginning to turn.  A ground swell of opposition to the war and the policies of this administration is sweeping the country.  You may know it and I may know it.  But many of our neighbors are as yet unaware because it hasn’t become mainstream news. It is therefore, our duty to speak out about threats presented to our constitutional rights in the name of terrorism.  It is our duty to pay attention to legislation aimed at protecting Big Business at our expense and the expense of our environment.  And it is our responsibility to arm ourselves with as many facts as we can find and to hammer at our elected representatives with our concerns until they all know that we mean business.

    And that we will not stand for a government of, for and by the corporations.  In the end, the human spirit will triumph.
 

     I want to leave you with two quotes.  The first is from Former Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis and it goes as follows:

“You can have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, or democracy, but you cannot have both”

    The second is a quote from Margaret Mead:

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world.  Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has”