Dear Mr. Gejdenson, I asked you two years ago, and I ask you again so you don't forget. Could you please do absolutely anything in your powers to influence your coworkers to shut SOA, that behemoth down? I know that Carter looked my friend Brett in the eye last year when he asked if we could get him and/or Amy (Brett wrote the Habitat For Humanity poem) and Carter told him "there's just things you can't know that make that school necessary." Sam, despite whatever that something is, you must spend the rest of your life slowing down the killing that my tiny little taxes every year directly causes! Frankly Sam, if you need some extra smoke under your tail, your best ally I think is Wellstone. He writes me back and tells me way more than just "you're preaching to the choir." He has no Frank Rowe to run flack for - so crazy little marc frucht will FEEL heard. He HEARS me, and he does the work. I honor you Sam, you do the work in most cases. My father fought hard for you every time. You're one of the only democrats he supported since President Kennedy. My sister fought tirelessly beside you during your SOS campaign to keep money in our beautiful little corner of Konetiuk. Yes, I live in Wisconsin now, Sam. I feel safer here than among the ________s, and _______s and _____s and _____s. But I'm sure you can relate to my feeling, that same one John Ledyard wrote about when he was trying to someday lead a pack of dogs from Northern California to Groton. I miss my hometown, Sam. I miss my sister and my mom and my ex-wife. But more than anything in this world I miss peace and I miss justice. Never mind that I haven't had healthcare since the day I left the army with a 10% medical honorable discharge, never mind I'm about 10 credits short of a bachelors at 35 years old and can't afford more than a semester every year or so on my GI Bill and odd jobs, and my credit's shot so financial aid is out of the question this time around. None of these things are important. When I learned late last nite that Gerardi's murderers were in part captured and some were arrested, I just knew it. I felt it in my bones that they would be linkable to SOA. Sam, my taxes paid for Bishop Juan Gerardi to be beaten to death the same day I sat on your marble steps protesting that very school that trained his murderers. An Episcopal priest came to the capitol steps to give us the news that morning he'd been beaten to death with a large piece of cement. Sam I cried tears the size of your paycheck. I've been working late nite hours for two years trying to uncover that one. It's the hardest work I've ever done in my life. I did it out of pocket asking for nothing. Just justice. I emailed Carole Richardson at http://www.soaw.org (ironically and poetically Father Roy is in Vatican city all this week lecturing about SOA, and Martin Sheen is filming a special West Wing that hints as much as it can at Catholic Worker type things.) In a matter of hours the people with Carole there pieced it all together and this conspiritor in that cold blooded murder which you allowed on your watch (me too) was in fact trained at the Fort Benning School I have protested at every November. Sam, ____ _______ has told me how proud he thinks my dad probably is. It's about the only thing that kept me from suicidal tendencies last millenium. Every single major candidate this year appears to me to be pro-police state, Sam. I tremble cold sweaty beads off my forehead knowing I'm half Jewish in a country that often times feels scarier by far than my grandfather's aunt Anna used to tell me Germany was as a teen in the 1920's and Russia as a toddler before that. AM I GOING TO ONE OF THOSE NEXT PEOPLE ON CATTLE CARS??? AND ALL I CARE TO DO IN THIS WORLD FOR THE REST OF MY LIFE IS PLAY MY 1954 MEXICAN HAND-MADE CLASSICAL GUITAR FOR PEOPLE ALL OVER THIS WORLD. But until that day when I see less people taking up arms in my name, all I can do is work odd jobs and have myself ready to spend weeks at a time in front of that escuela de los asesinos, every November and your DC offices every spring. M-