Posted on 06/25/2006 10:13:41 AM PDT by got_moab?
Steven Kelly was setting tile at a house in Narragansett Friday morning. That's what he does. It's a craft that helped him pay his way through college. It's also a craft that puts him in a lot of houses in Rhode Island and Massachusetts. He talks to people. He hears the shared disappointment over the lack of meaningful public discussion.
Tomorrow, Kelly, a 51-year-old Saunderstown resident, will go to the Rhode Island Board of Elections and file to run for U.S. Senate. He'll file as an independent, because the Democratic Party he grew up with and loved and believed in has disappeared. And the Republican Party is, well, the Republican Party.
OK, OK, I know -- another fringe candidate with little money or organization or name recognition. But guess what? The mainstream party candidates who do have the money and the organization and the name recognition aren't exactly firing up the public or inspiring hope for better days. Have you seen the TV ads? They're about as compelling as a Lava lamp.
"The last six years have been so discouraging -- both parties haven't come out of this well," says Kelly.
So check him out. He'll make it interesting. He'll actually say things. And he's going to be all over the place. On July 10, he'll be at the peace rally in Wickford not far from The Wellness Store, which he owns with his wife, Theresia. Michael Berg is going to be there, too. He is the father of Nicholas Berg, who was beheaded in Iraq. Michael Berg has become one of the leading voices in the peace movement, with the kind of credentials that are impossible to question.
And the Kellys have been there, too. Military Families Speak Out, an organization in which they are extremely active, has provided a core of support for Steven's campaign.
They are a military family because Theresia's son and Steven's stepson, Josh Biesiada, served two tours in Iraq. And he served them after his original four-year enlistment was up. He was "stop lossed" by the Army and sent to war twice. He is now taking what Steven says is a well-deserved break with family in California. But he plans to spend August in Rhode Island helping with the Kelly campaign.
Kelly talks about the numbers, about the possibility of tapping into those Democrats who, like him, don't really know the party anymore. He wants to retrieve and revive the party's liberal wing, wherever it might have gone.
He talks of Franklin Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy, Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King, men who actually stood for things in a party that actually believed that government should take care of people who need to be taken care of.
He also talks about the war in Iraq, the one that has been such an unavoidable presence for him and his wife. He is all for getting out now and getting back to the real business of government -- to veterans and housing and inner cities and energy.
He's been talking. If you're among the small but growing group of Rhode Islanders who feel the need to gather at rallies and add your voice to the call for peace, you might already know Steven Kelly. He's up there speaking in a way that's pretty darned effective, if he says so himself.
It seems fitting that the peace movement should produce a candidate this year. While so many have tried so hard to dance around the issue, it is the people who have been going to the rallies and holding the vigils and writing the letters who have been saying what needs to be said: We gotta get out of that place.
One of them is running for Senate. He's a long shot. He even dares use the "L" word.
"I'm proud to be a tree-hugging liberal," says Steven Kelly.
You will not hear another candidate in Rhode Island say that this year.
-WTF??? Pass me some of what this delusional crispity crunchity 60's leftover is smoking!!
bkerr@projo.com / (401) 277-7252 (For anyone else whose mystified as to just what Mr. Bergs "credentials" are)
I meant "who's", dammit...
Good. He'll split the moonbat vote and the Republican candidate will win.
I stopped reading here.
Not because I think the Republican Party is perfect. But because this presumption indicates the logic will be faulty throughout. Therefore the piece can be counted on to mislead. From the media, I consider that malpractice. Would I want to watch any practiction botch up his work? No.
Didn't Ann Coulter just write a book that deals this 'progressive' practice? Ask not what my motives are - only look at my family/personal history - and then take my word for it....
Michael Berg has become one of the leading voices in the peace movement, with the kind of credentials that are impossible to question.
We can empathize with his loss but his politics remain open
to question. Does this make me a bad person? I am not the one politicizing his loss, he is.
We must not fall for the "impossible to question" defense,
others lives will depend on us.
Retrieve and revive the liberal wing???
I wonder what he considers the current democratic liberal party???
I guess the moderate liberal even consider the people running their party barking moonbats
"I'm proud to be a tree-hugging liberal," says Steven Kelly.
Then why not run as a Democrat? Please stop pretending that your agenda and theirs are soooo different.
Is that still from "Bring Me The Head of Alfredo Garcia"?
Yup, Mr. Warren Oates and Alf. ;-D
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