3/30/2022

My Dear Friend & POTUS, JRB,

            It was exciting to hear Ida B. Well (IBW)’s being celebrated at your signing of the Anti-Lynching Act yesterday. I was especially appreciative of her great-granddaughter’s remarks about the way in which Ida B, The Queen, “exposed uncomfortable truths that upset the status quo.” It’s disappointing to learn that it took more than 200 attempts to make lynching a hate crime, but it’s finally been accomplished. Yeah!!

            Did you know that IBW’s great-granddaughter, Michelle Duster, is a Dartmouth, ’85? I heard her last year talking about one of her books about IBW. She’s a remarkable individual in her own right, doing everything she can to promote IBW’s accomplishments including getting a street in Chicago named for her. Go Big Greenies!

            Did you & PM Lee Hsien Loong of Singapore come up with some good ideas for restoring democracy to Burma? I encourage you to take a look at the NYT article about young folks in the jungles on the Mynamar borders who left their professions in the cities to fight with the ethnic armies. Things are so extreme there that a former Catholic seminary student says, “Killing is a sin, but not when it is a good war.”

            You & I know, there is no such thing as a “good war.” War is Not the Answer. Peace is the way.

Please do all you can to promote peace in the world. Let it begin in our hearts by finding a way to love VVP & MAH.

            BYBS,