By By JOHN EBY / Niles Daily Star
CASSOPOLIS – Leading the peace march through the village Saturday was Don Cooney, the Kalamazoo city commissioner challenging U.S. Rep. Fred Upton's lock on the sixth district congressional seat since 1987.
Cooney is a social work professor and former Catholic priest
To examine the "consequences" of five years of war in Iraq and in Afghanistan, Cooney read from a recent New York Times column by Bob Herbert: "I keep thinking of the many ordinary people, the service members, their relatives and so many others who have suffered so grievously from this misbegotten and thoroughly unnecessary war."
Herbert remembered talking in 2004 with a "baby-faced sergeant" from Alaska who said, "I was blown up in an IED (improvised explosive device) attack."
The IED broke three bones in his back, broke an arm and he lost his left leg below the knee.
"He was badly burned. The lower part of his face had to be reconstructed. He suffered a brain injury. This is just the tiniest glimpse of the sort of thing that happens when a President refuses to heed the call of reason and, instead, immediately and unforgivably sends his country's brave young volunteers into a pointless conflagration," Cooney said.
"You know that the least cost of this war has been the enormous financial cost," Cooney said before WAND's (Women's Action for New Directions) Father's Day peace march through Cassopolis.
"Joseph Stiglitz, the Nobel Prize economics winner, said it will cost us $3 trillion. Think about how that money could be used to provide a decent education for each one of our children. Or health care for the 46 million Americans who have none. Shelter for the people in our communities who are losing their homes through foreclosure. To rebuild the physical infrastructure in our country. That's where those resources should be going. Instead, we continue to waste them at the rate of $34 million an hour on this war."
"And I say that's the least cost," Cooney continued. "More than 4,000 of our young people have already died in that war. More than 1 million have been over there, and it's estimated that 30 percent are coming back with post-traumatic stress disorder. That's 300,000 people. We'll live with that and they'll live with that for the rest of their lives. The Veterans Administration tried to suppress the figures, but now the estimates are that 18 veterans a day are committing suicide. What a price to pay! What a price to pay in terms of the people of Iraq, the destruction of their water system, of their sanitation system, of their health care system. They don't even bother to count how many of these people have died, but the estimates might be as many as a million in a population of 28 million. Think about that."
"What is this cost of this war in terms of our international relations?" Cooney asked on this sunny, 79-degree day outside Cass County Democratic headquarters in the Family Dollar shopping plaza. "This nonsense must stop – and we can stop it. That's why I'm running for Congress. I wouldn't be up here today if Fred Upton had taken a stand against this war. I have enough to do in Kalamazoo, but he has backed this war. I have sat in his office in Washington and talked with him, one on one.
"I want to be like (Albert) Camus (the French author): 'I should like to love my country and still be able to love justice.' That's what we're about. We're better than that. We stand for higher ideals like justice and liberty. Today, in this community, we say, no, end this war. We say bring the troops home and support them."
Carol Higgins' 'new
energy for Michigan'
Cooney was joined at the microphone by Carol Higgins, the Mendon bed-and-breakfast operator and former Marcellus teacher running for the Michigan House of Representatives in term-limited Rick Shaffer's 59th District.
Friday night she took part in the Three Rivers Water Carnival parade.
Higgins, who put up a clothesline and quit using her dryer a year ago, is using a clothes pin to symbolize her "New energy for Michigan" campaign slogan for solar, water and wind renewable resources and green jobs.
Upton advocates more nuclear power, which WAND opposes.
Higgins, oldest of eight children who grew up on a family farm, was accompanied by her father, Paul, a Korea veteran, and her husband, Larry, a Vietnam veteran who retired from the naval reserve.
Higgins graduated from Nazareth College and earned a master's degree from Western Michigan University. She taught in Marcellus for 17 years. Their St. Joseph County family farm was recognized as the Conservation Farm of the Year and for management by Michigan State University in a statewide program. Her three daughters are grown. She has three step-children and she and Larry together have six grandchildren "so family is really an important part of my life and the vision of where we need to go."
"Peace doesn't just happen overnight," she said. "I see us needing to make some changes right now in order to make things happen for our grandchildren."
Higgins organized her remarks around such adages as "A stitch in time saves nine," "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure" and "A day late and a dollar short," which is where "a lot of the things we do politically leaves us. We wait until a big problem arises, then we try to scrounge up the money to fix it. The things I really want to see happen for Michigan rely on the other saying, 'An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.' My three big issues are education, health care and energy."
"We can't afford what happens when we don't prevent dropouts," she said. "They end up in prison and on welfare rolls. A dollar spent on prevention is worth many, many dollars of cure. Gang violence because we aren't keeping our children occupied and supervised could be prevented for many, many pounds of cure when we have to lock more doors and put up more walls, trying to protect what we have instead of helping our people so they have what they need to be successful. We need to invest in job training. I support Gov. Granholm's ideas along that line so people can retrain and be ready for the jobs that are going to be there. With our resources, Michigan is going to be a comeback kid."
On health care, Higgins "vaguely recalls" being 8 or 9 years old, going to town and standing in line to get the first polio vaccine.
"If we can teach people how to take care of themselves, they aren't going to have as many illnlesses later in life that will end up increasing our insurance costs," she said. "Air quality in Cass County is poor. You'd think it would be great in a rural area, but apparently Lake Michigan is a funnel for pollution and it dumps it right here. Things like asthma and lung disease are a problem because our air quality isn't good. We need to prevent pollution and create a quality environment. A lot of people are pushing for coal-burning power plants, but even 'clean coal' is still dirty. We're better off if we can conserve and find alternatives that don't pollute at all. If any of us deserve health care, we all deserve health care. When I'm in Lansing, I'm going to do my best to try to narrow that gulf between those who have it and those who don't so we all feel we have what we need without going bankrupt and losing our homes."
Energy conserved now will save much more down the road, Higgins said.
"There are a lot of people getting money from our state to pay their heating bills," she said. "Let's expand that to re-insulate and replace windows. Clothes pins are a little thing, but Larry and I have a nice, windy location and we have not used our dryer for a year, so I really appreciate renewable energy. Let's promote energy in Michigan and use it as a great way to bring jobs to this state and to create an atmosphere where we can all succeed. When we work for justice, and put research and funding behind our slogan to 'Give peace a chance,' we clear the way for a better tomorrow. The peace we want for our children and grandchildren depends on the stitches of justice we weave today."