Claire O'Connor

I was born in Boston MA and raised in St. Paul MN. My father, an Irish immigrant and son of a member of the Irish Republican Army was a Union Organizer. My mother, a musician, descended from one of the earliest Europeans to settle on this continent. I inherited ties to two very different communities, the Irish Republican Army and the Daughters of the American Revolution. I don't know why anyone should be interested except that it reveals something about me that I shared with you - we are all the descendents of wild and wonderful diversity, from the DAR to the IRA, from man to woman, from the far north to far south around the world. It makes absolutely no sense that we should be fearful of the differences between us. We are wonderfully different person to person and along our many family trees. It makes absolutely no sense to me that our difference should be an instrument that divides us from each other and our potentials or from being enriched by our differences and commonality. That we let that happen and let fear and humiliation take root makes absolutely no sense either. I am often asked, and find it hard to explain, why the blue-eyed blonde from Minnesota pictured here should get involved in the struggle for human rights. The fact is, I just don't know how else to go through life. I am not a hero, not a leader, not particularly courageous nor particularly intelligent. I am just like you, gloriously different and energized by that. I went to Mississippi in 1961 and again in 1964 to go through life there for a while. I continued to struggle to answer those who wondered why. I used to quote Dr. Martin Luther King who, I think, was quoting someone else -"no one is free when some are in chains." And I absolutely believe it. But as an explanation, it is too abstract. During the 2000, presidential election (selection) two things last their abstraction. First, I came to understand, first hand what it feels like to have your vote taken away. I voted, but my vote didn't count as the Supreme Court handed the presidency to the looser. I also gained a new insight into my nation and society during that election.It hit me suddenly; the system that divides us from each other that we and our many previous generations tolerated has been the cause of its own weakness. What a sorry state we are in. How different it would be if Native North Americans and African Americans and women had been participatingin the political and social processes that made this country? What would have been invented or discovered, what diseases cured, symphonies,books and poetry written, or problems solved? We are in this sorry state because we have been doing a sorry job of enriching ourselves. Well this blue eyed blonde hates the sorry state we are in and I don't want it to be that way any more. What do you think?

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