DD 12/14/04 POLITICAL POEM, NEWS STORY

Two political pieces... First, this defiant poem by Aaron Kramer, written in 1950 when people were being jailed for refusal to cooperate with the House Un-American Activities Committee, on charges of "being in contempt of Congress."
IN CONTEMPT
Build high, build wide your prison wallsThat there be room enough for allWho hold you in contempt; build wideThat all the bad be locked inside.
The birds who still insist on song,The sunlit streams still running strong,The flowers a-blazing every hue,All are in contempt of you
When you have seized the gallant fewWhose glory casts a shade on you,How can you now go home with easeJangling your heavy dungeon keys?
The parents dreaming still of peaceThe playful children, the wild geeseWho still must fly the mountains to,All are in contempt of you.
When you have seized both moon and sunAnd jailed the poems one by oneAnd trapped each trouble-making breezeThen you must throw away your keys.
Build high, build wide your prison wallsThat there be room enough for allWho hold you in contempt; build wideThat all the bad be locked inside.
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Second, this story from the Ukraine: I know that both sides in the election are players in a power struggle among bigger countries, but still in the midst of it all, there is room for individual heroism.
Friday 3rd December 2004 (02h52) : How one woman sparked the revolution (Ukraine) 3 comment(s).
Silent protester is a powerful voice against official ‘lies’
From Jeremy Page in Kiev
NATALYA DMITRUK’s silent protest was perhaps the least obvious of all the demonstrations in support of Viktor Yushchenko. But it was one of the most courageous.
For three years, the sign- language interpreter had dutifully translated the news twice daily on UT-1, the state-run television channel that is the mouthpiece for Viktor Yanukovych, the Prime Minister.
But when Tatyana Krav-chenko, UT-1’s anchorwoman, announced on Thursday morning that Mr Yanukovych had won a disputed presidential election, Mrs Dmitruk left the script.
“I am addressing all the deaf citizens of Ukraine,” she signed from the bottom right-hand corner of the screen, a ribbon of opposition orange tied around her wrist. “Our President is Yushchenko. Don’t believe what they say. They are lying.”
Then Mrs Dmitruk, 47, whose parents are deaf, went back to interpreting the report, before abandoning the script again at the end of the bulletin.
“My soul is heavy that I had to repeat these lies,” she signed - her colleagues still oblivious to what she was doing. “I will not do it again. I don’t know if we’ll see each other again.”
Mrs Dmitruk’s defiant gesture was one of a flurry of protests by staff at Ukrainian television channels that highlight the crumbling support in state institutions for the outgoing President Kuchma and the Prime Minister he backed.
When her newscast finished, Mrs Dmitruk left the studio and joined a strike by more than 220 journalists and contributors at UT-1 in protest at the one-sided coverage of the election and its aftermath.
Now UT-1 and other state-controlled channels have bowed to pressure to lift a ban on coverage of opposition protests, giving many people in Russian-speaking eastern Ukraine their first glimpse of the huge crowds around Kiev’s Independence Square...