Posted on 03/14/2006 11:28:51 AM PST by KevinNuPac
Terri's Day challenges the nation to unify
Kevin Fobbs
March 13, 2006
Terri's Day A Celebration of the Culture of Life honoring Terri Schiavo with a day of remembrance challenges each and every one of us to stop for a moment and ask ourselves a question, do we respect ourselves, our families, our lives?
And if we are faced with the question of the possible certainty of death, does anyone truly know, or even have the faintest clue about, our wishes? That is the greatest good, the greatest legacy that Terri Schiavo's death and an annual "Terri's Day" can bring to our lives and to the celebration of the Culture of Life.
On March 18th, we as a nation will begin to grieve again, to reach into our hearts and feel with our collective national spirit what the Schindler family felt last year at this time as each moment since Terri was disconnected from the feeding lifeline, the moments crept by like hours and hours like days.
All of us have felt in some way that pain even if it were only in the privacy of our loved one's home, hospital room, hospice or perhaps talking with an attorney and doctor attempting to make sense out of some fleeting comments made in a conversation perhaps voiced ten, twelve or even two decades earlier not necessarily an expression of her true feeling about an end-of-life decision but merely an incidental musing in a long-forgotten side conversation.
For at least one million Americans, and quite possibly a whole lot more, this is an opportunity to voice an opinion through a pledge supporting a resolution in each state called "Terri's Day A Celebration of the Culture of Life." Each and every person who cares that your family, your spouse, your mother, your father, your sister or brother understands with clarity what you wish the end of life for you to be, with dignity and certainty should sign the online pledge at www.kevinfobbs.com and take the additional step to sign a Living Will or as they call it at www.terrisfight.org, the Will to Live.
Some have asked why Americans should care about an annual Terri's Day. It is quite simple, we tend to keep turning the page on the Culture of Life because we feel it does not affect us. We tend to believe that seemingly universal belief that those who are handicapped, those who are not quite living a "perfect" life or by contemporary notion "ideal" then those lives are possibly disposable, marginal, not relevant, and part of the Culture of Death which embraces a "disposable society."
But life and our values for the Culture of Life are not disposable. Think about the young people today who would rather hurt themselves or even take their own lives rather than feel "imperfect" or the elderly person whose family is told by an insensitive health care professional while the stricken person struggles to cling to life, "she would be better off in another place," just let her die, disconnect her from life, because her quality of life is not up to "contemporary standards. "
Why does celebrating the Culture of Life in Michigan become so essential for all of us in America? It is important for several reasons. Dr. Jack Kervorkian, also known as "Doctor Death" helped launch first in Michigan and then the nation the notion of the death culture. Secondly, and equally as important, at the May 12 event just two days before Mother's Day there will also be a "Mary's Moms" celebration of those women and mothers who have met challenges in standing up for some aspect of the Culture of Life.
This past weekend I sat at my cousin's funeral or going home celebration, which more accurately describes it thinking about the dearly departed and how she packed so much caring for others into her life even as she struggled with illness and advancing age. She was a wonderful woman who had lived through many, many challenges in her life, but in her 73 years she had met these challenges with dignity and had conveyed to her family when would be the right time to allow her to pass away.
Her daughter, who is a minister, spoke to the packed church about the times when, with all of her pain and then a stroke, the doctors had informed them that perhaps it was better to let her go. Yet that was three years ago that that occurred, and if the family had listened to the doctors and refused to see how she fought back and not only recovered but went back to volunteering at the church to feed and clothe the homeless. The medical professionals didn't care about an elderly lady who was on dialysis, but the family did and they knew better. Patricia lived three more years years her extensive extended family considered "a gift from God."
So isn't part of the lesson of Terri's legacy and Terri's Day for families and loved ones to have a meaningful conversation with their family and to have the written document on hand as well that conveys the wishes clearly and concisely? You betcha.
As I sat in the church I thought of all of the families across the nation and the world who were sitting at their loved one's bedsides or even standing outside of a hospital emergency room overwhelmed with emotion, torn by what may be days of conflicting anguished decisions. I thought again of how out of death we may have the certainty of life. Terri's death reminded the nation that yes a state can and will starve you to death, and your family may be rendered helpless as you watch your loved one's precious life forces drain slowly away.
By signing the online pledge at www.kevinfobbs.com or going to www.terrisfight.org, you can learn about how to encourage your state legislature to establish March 31st as an official Terri's Day. Hold a Culture of Life Home Party or meet-and-greet to sign pledges, share ideas and support The Terri Schindler Schiavo Foundation as well as Culture of Life activities and events in your community or around the nation. Between now and March 31st you can make a dramatic difference for yourself, your family and for the nation. Stand up for the Culture of Life because one person, one life, one family can and does make a difference in America. Make the difference and be the difference today. America...The countdown for the Culture of Life has begun.
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Kevin Fobbs is President of National Urban Policy Action Council (NuPac), a non-partisan civic and citizen-action organization that focuses on taking the politics out of policy to secure urban America's future one neighborhood, one city, and one person at a time. View NuPac on the web at www.nupac.info. Kevin Fobbs is a regular contributing columnist for the Detroit News. He is also the daily host of The Kevin Fobbs Show on News Talk WDTK - 1400 AM in Detroit. Listen to The Kevin Fobbs Show online at www.wdtkam.com daily 2-3 p.m., and call in toll-free nationwide to make your opinion count at 800-923-WDTK(9385) © Copyright 2006 by Kevin Fobbs http://www.renewamerica.us/columns/fobbs/060313
And they call themselves republican. Hah!
I smell more coverup and Schiavo-Gate goes on.
www.conservative-spirit.org
I keep demanding a real investigation. A real investigation. If the GOP wants its base back, they better stop murdering innocents in exchange for fundraising dollars. And, there's the under the table monies that we aren't supposed to know about. In Tallahasee, there's no appreciable difference between the dems and the republicans except republicans lie about being pro-life. Dems don't have to.
Once they have been robbed of everything, they qualify for Medicaid and then they are murdered.
Auditor Melton was denied Greer's guardianship files. Greer refused to hand them over. Why? Because Greer is not only a killer on the bench but a robber too. He signs the orders to turn wards' assets over to these hokey trusts.
Rob them first and then kill them. I can't make this stuff up.
www.judgegeorgegreer.com
Terri's Ensure cost $8.00 per day. Doesn't sound like extraordinary measures to me. But, then again, I'm not a rich republican or in the death cult lobby.
On March 18th, I still had respect and trust in the US Govt. All eroded daily and I hope they're happy because there's nothing they can do to earn it back. I'm not alone either.
Judge Baird doesn't get as much notoriety as Greer or J. Whittemore (Fed Crt Tampa) but he also aided and abetted Terri's murder.
Judge W. Douglas Baird (euthanazi at the 49th St. N. Courthouse Complex by State Atty Bernie McCabe's Office (another GOP turncoat who refused to impanel a Grand Jury).
For a Twilight Zone vacation, there's no better place than Pinellas County, now known as "Death Central."
This opens another door into the warped mind of George Greer.
Animals CAN talk. He's an animal cracking jokes about his job on his last comic standing tour. He has no respect for the office of judge. Somebody paid him REAL GOOD - real good to make sure Terri would die last year.
Terri was murdered after unimaginable suffering and terror.
Terri's final hours as per Father Frank Pavone are on my profile page. Click on my name, freepers to get there. Fregards, FV
There have been numerous attacks on judicial independence over time, Greer said. The latest of these attacks on the branch is called Jail4Judges".
I didn't know that. Thanks for the tip Judge Greer.
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Does the north country gazette article mention Greer's definition of accountability. It's a real mish mash. Nonsensical.
You don't have to. It's one of mankind's oldest pastimes.
It's too late to pray for Terri, she's, hopefully in heaven however we should pray for her parents and her brother and sister. What hell they went through.
Terri will do well in the hereafter. Those who hurt her, they will face judgment day. (I'm hoping for an adjudication by the federal authorities first. Jail 4 Judges really bugs Greer. If he's done nothing wrong, why's he so apprehensive? rhetorical ?)
It sounds pretty clear to me.
We Catholics pray for the dead. I will continue to pray for Terri, a Catholic who graduated from the Catholic Schools as did I. In fact, she graduated from the same CAtholic School diocese from which I graduated.
If Terri was truly "brain dead" she would have required a heart and lung machine.
Oh, the AP finally acknowledges that Terri was only brain-damaged and not comatose! How long did we have to write letters to editors (that rarely made it to print) to get them to change the way they misinformed the public on that one point alone?
You are a late bloomer, but no less welcome to the realm of wisdom!
I lost my faith when we abandoned the sensible, limited powers of the Articles of Confederation (1787). I reckoned that an all-powerful central government, as authorized in the so-called "U.S." Constitution, was certain to bring us to grief, and it did, and we didn't have to wait long. Thomas Jefferson lost his faith when the Judiciary took over by declaring itself to be God (or a god, anyway) in Marbury vs. Madison, 1803. I know some people who think we lost it when Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected and took office (1933), but by that time the government had caused the greatest depression in history and on top of that, was spending $3,000,000,000 A YEAR, all of which, of course, goes straight down the rathole.
I don't even want to tell you how much is going down the rathole now. But that's what we get for ever trusting a politician.
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