To Everyone

"The artist must elect to fight for freedom or slavery. I have made my choice. I had no alternative." - Paul Robeson

"Despair is a lie we are telling ourselves. This is a moment in history that needs us to begin, each of us every day...Act. Organize. Assemble. Oppose. Resist." - Tony Kushner

We will not stop. We will fight on for peace. PLEASE send us your thoughts and voices today, tonight, tomorrow - whenever you feel you can pass on some hope to others - so we can share it with the whole THAW list as a way of helping to rekindle our strength and our courage.

Let's speak to each other now. Email whatever is in your hearts and minds to thawaction@yahoo.com do we can share people's words with everyone in THAW.

Please also know, in the next few hours, we will be sending you all information about our next steps.  Please stay closely tuned and get in touch with your ideas.  For those of you who were not with us on Tuesday night at the THAW event, we send you Kathleen Chalfant’s message below which in so many ways, resonates even more today than Tuesday perhaps.

In peace and in hope,
- Theaters Against War

As the angel said when she came through the ceiling "The great work begins!" and so it does no matter who wins tonight. That's not quite right though, since the great work has already begun and THAW is in the vanguard of it. It has been my great pleasure and privilege to be part of this movement that harnesses what is best in the theatre to accomplish what is best in the country through the free expression of art and wit and whatever else anyone has to add to the enterprise. I'm sorry not to be with you all, but while not saying the words of Tennessee Williams tonight I'm thinking of you. I'd like to close with a quotation from a document that is currently out of print at the government printing office in the hope that its proposition has been fulfilled. From the Declaration of Independence:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.