Jeannette Rankin: The Most Incredible U.S. Politician Most People Don't Know
My Retro-reaction to Pearl Harbor Day (plus some more memes)
Wednesday, May 19, 2010
PEACE HEROES: Jeannette Rankin
“There can be no compromise with war; it cannot be reformed or controlled; cannot be disciplined into decency or codified into common sense;
for war is the slaughter of human beings, temporarily regarded as enemies, on as large a scale as possible.”
Jeannette Rankin
Jeannette Rankin (June 11, 1880 – May 18, 1973), is probably best known (if she is known at all) as the first female elected to Congress in 1917. Ms. Rankin was elected from Montana, even before females achieved universal suffrage in the U.S. Montana achieved female suffrage in 1914.
Unlike the first female who was given the gavel as Speaker of the House in 2007, Nancy Pelosi—Jeannette Rankin was an uncompromising advocate for world peace. Also, unlike Ms. Pelosi, Ms. Rankin did more than give lip service to her feelings of peace—she actually sacrificed much to live out her values.
As an advocate for peace, Ms. Rankin lived through arguably the most warlike decades of this nation’s history.
She was elected to Congress in 1917, just in time to be one of only 50 reps to vote “nay” on entry into World War I—she served only one term in Congress and was gerrymandered out of her district.
Through the years between the “Great War I” and the “Great War II,” Jeannette worked with various peace groups--Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) being the most prominent and long-lived group that continues to this day.
In 1940, Ms. Rankin was returned to Congress from Montana running on an ant-war platform. Citizens of the U.S. were war weary and the losses from World War I had been immense and the pain caused was immeasurable. After the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, Jeannette was the soul Member of Congress to vote against the declaration of war against Japan stating: “"As a woman, I can't go to war and I refuse to send anyone else. It is not necessary. I vote NO." Up until Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor, the mood of the country was anti-interventionist, but after that, like after 9/11, there arose a rabid nationalism and thirst for vengeance. Ms. Rankin’s vote against the declaration of war was not popular, to say the least.
Rankin’s lone vote against the war reminds me of Rep. Barbara Lee’s (D-CA) cool head and solitary vote against giving killer-Bush authorization to invade Afghanistan after the 9/11 attack, when the mood of the country was once again fervently pro-vengeance.
For her vote Ms. Rankin again lost her seat in Congress and set out in a quest for peaceful solutions to “problems,” and this quest took her to India seven times to study the tactics of Mahatma Gandhi. Like my first PEACE HERO, Albert Einstein, Jeannette Rankin was a proponent of disarmament.
In 1967, Jeannette said, “It is unconscionable that 10,000 boys have died in Vietnam.... If 10,000 American women had mind enough they could end the war, if they were committed to the task, even if it meant going to jail.” She then led a protest in DC in 1968 with thousands of women. Unfortunately, before that war was over (one that she adamantly opposed, to no one’s surprise) millions of people would be slaughtered.
I became aware of this amazing woman when I was involved in a docu-drama about her life called: A Single Woman, written by and starring in the lead role: JeanMarie Simpson—who is also a peace worker. I highly recommend checking this movie out for the biographical information about Ms. Rankin.
Even being a student of history, I had never heard of this singularly remarkable woman.
I am moved by Ms. Rankin’s work because of the undiluted energy she put into it and how she never wavered even under intense pressure. I have faced a fraction of what she had to endure, so I can appreciate and derive inspiration from her persistence in the face of adversity.
It is my belief, that until the governments of the world are filled with a majority of women like Jeannette Rankin and women who tow the line of the status quo of war, like Nancy Pelosi are sent packing, nothing will change and our young people will still fight, die and kill for old people’s profit.
PEACE HEROES IS A SERIES BY CINDY SHEEHAN OF PEOPLE FROM WHOM SHE DERIVES INSPIRATION.
Ebenezer Biden Screwging the Entire Country (6 December 2024)
YIKES!!!!!!!
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I'm 75 years old. Like you, Cindy, I went to Catholic school for 12 years and learned to love everything about God and country. Then, in the late sixties, I went to college at UC Berkeley. The various protests and brutal police suppression radicalized me. Still, I believed in some semblance of the basic goodness of our government. Since then, it's been decades of disappointment. There have been so many wars and government actions that I opposed.
A few days after the 9/11 attacks, I heard a caller on talk radio say that "maybe our own government was behind this?" The radio host swore and hung up on the guy. I, too, was incredulous that someone could suggest such a thing, killing thousands of our own citizens.
With the Iraq war of 2003 came the continuous bleat of "weapons of mass destruction." I started reading alternative media about these bogus claims. That led me "down a rabbit hole."
From 2003 to 2013, I followed many discussion groups and alternative news sources on what were called "conspiracy theories." I analyzed the arguments of the debunkers and then the debunkers of the debunkers. My own early idealistic upbringing would not let me accept the depth of treachery I discovered about false flags and other covert actions. After ten years of reading and research, I reluctantly came to the conclusion that many, perhaps most of these "conspiracy theories" had validity.
Ten years of study and I became absolutely convinced of the falsity of the 9/11 official narrative. Part way through those ten years, I read that the December 7th, 1941 "surprise attack" by Japan on Pearl Harbor was known about in advance and allowed to happen to galvanize public support for the war. With shock, I dismissed that possibility as a bridge too far, even as a 9/11 "truther." However, after a few more years of recognizing patterns of government malfeasance, it makes perfect sense to me that the Pearl Harbor attack was permitted with full foreknowledge to manipulate the American public.
(Side note: I learned that many warships were moved out of Pearl Harbor before the attack, leaving older ships and those awaiting repair to be bombed. My own father sailed out of Pearl Harbor on a troop transport bound for the South Seas on December 6th, 1941, ONE DAY before Pearl Harbor was bombed. That was just one more data point for me.)
My sense of betrayal at the depths of treachery by my/our "leaders" has left me with an embittered heartbreak that haunts me to this day. Such is my remembrance of Pearl Harbor Day, December 7th, 2024.
As you may know, Cindy, I wrote about Jeanette Rankin in "Crimes and Cover-Ups in American Politics: 1776-1963." I consider her perhaps the greatest female politician in our history. If any female should be on the U.S. currency, she should be the first selection. She had to have police protection to escort her out of Congress after being the only member to not vote to declare war on Japan. Like you, she believed in peace, period. Regardless of politics. Thanks!