Name one of your personal Heroes/Heroines

[NamVetsWeeLass]

Spurred on by the RIP John Lennon thread I began to recall heroes of mine and I wondered, what are some of yours? Personally, I choose the following: My Dad, My Uncles Herman and Dayne. John Lennon, for making us all Imagine, and John Kerry for who he is. Heroines include My Aunt Bo, Teresa Heinz, Princess Diana... Anyway, Who are yours and Why? These are off the top of my head, so, if I didn't include your pick personally, add them to your post.

[Bertha Venation]

1. Maya Angelou and my sisters Bonnie and Annette.

All three rose from ashes, breaking patterns they were destined to repeat, and made beautiful things of their lives.

[RubyDuby in GA]

2. Matcom

followed closely by Jimmy Carter.

[baba]

3. The early feminists.

Too many to mention.

[el_gato]

4. Amy Goodman

[donheld]

27. Good one

Amy is also one of mine

[intheflow]

5. Dolores Huertas

Labor Leader for the Farmworker's Union.

[nothingshocksmeanymore]

10. You can meet her..she's very accessible still and active with the union

All you gotta do is end up in the Central Valley for one of their periodic events honoring her...she is ONE wonderful lady..met her many times

In fact, next time I get a bulliten from them..I'll pass the info on to you (bookmarking this thread)

[intheflow]

21. I've heard her speak twice.

Once in Colorado about a year after 9-11. Once in DC at the Reproductive Rights march last April. I have yet to meet here, but hope to one day. She's an amazing woman. And an inspiring reminder that powerful forces can come in small packages!

[maveric]

6. Rosa Parks, Jackie Robinson, Mrs. Kalman, HS history teacher and

holocaust survivor. She was 17 and managed to escape Dachau with another youth, who she eventually married. It was eerie to see her tattoo on her inner arm.

[stinkeefresh]

7. Jim Henson

[SaintAnne]

8. my parents

especially my mommy, but my dad's pretty cool too.

[MsAnthropy]

9. People who work in healthcare, police and fire

[TlalocW]

11. James Randi (The Amazing Randi)

At a time when knowledge and the desire for knowledge should be pushing society forward, the human race is still swallowing whole every pseudo-scientific piece of garbage from medical quackery to ESP to religious healings, and he's one of the few voices raised up against it and has been most of his life, sometimes at great personal risk from some of the people he's exposed.

TlalocW

[Tikki]

12. Mr. Tikki...

he is four other peoples' hero, too....

[lpbk2713]

13. Muhammad Ali & Cesar Chavez

Even though you only asked for one.

[Guy Whitey Corngood]

14. Matcom followed closely by Pedro Albizu Campos. n/t

[pres2032]

15. Pope John Paul II and Mother Theresa

Both instant saints in my book. They have just done so much good for mankind and they have reached out to non-Catholics and even Non-Christians. It will be a sad day indeed when the Pope dies, but that also means we can start the process to beatification.

[intheflow]

25. Pope John XXIII.

He's the human rights pope of the 20th century! Love that man!

"All the evils which poison men and nations and trouble so many hearts have a single cause and a single source: ignorance of the truth—and at times even more than ignorance, a contempt for truth and a reckless rejection of it." -- John XXIII

AD PETRI CATHEDRAM
ENCYCLICAL OF POPE JOHN XXIII
ON TRUTH, UNITY AND PEACE, IN A SPIRIT OF CHARITY
June 29, 1959
http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_xxiii/encyclicals/documents/hf_j-xxiii_enc_29061959_ad-petri_en.html

[donheld]

26. Pope John Paul II?

You've got to be joking> :puke:

[MissMillie]

16. My mom.

She really lives her life as an example of how she would want to be treated. If she can help someone, she does. She is thoughtful, considerate, loving, fun-loving, resourceful and godly.

She and my dad raised 6 of her own kids, 2 foster kids on little money and with little help.

All of her children are well-adjusted, loving, productive members of society.

If I could be half the mom she is, I would consider myself to be a success.

[ZoCrowes]

17. Fela Kuti

Not only was he an amazing musician and bandleader but he was one of the few people who actually put his ass on the line and stood behind his message even if it cost him his own life.

[Magrittes Pipe]

18. DLM

[Kellanved]

19. Willy Brandt

[cry baby]

20. Freedom fighters, American armed forces that fight in legitimate

wars that really fight for our freedom, astronauts.

[Va Lefty]

22. Robert Kennedy

Our history would be so much different if he had lived. I think he would have beaten Nixon easily. We would have been out of Vietnam by '70, at the latest, no Watergate... The road not taken.

[underpants]

23. Guy Whitey Corngood

But since that name wasn't on the list I voted for Thomas Jefferson *SIGH*

[Guy Whitey Corngood]

31. I'm staritng a petition to be included in this poll. ; - ) n/t

[CarbonDate]

24. David Hackworth n/t

.

[Dzimbowicz]

28. My avatar says it all

[obreaslan]

29. My dad...

Ex-Navy, College Anti-War activist/Class President, Commune Founder/Leader, Union Organizer turned National Union VP.

Sadly, not with us anymore, but a true Working Class Hero if ever there was one.

:toast:

[Bombtrack]

30. George Carlin.

[American Tragedy]

32. I'm going to name someone that will shock you guys, maybe piss you off

You ask an interesting question. First of all, I often wonder if there are any heroes in the classical sense, since human beings are so flawed, and great men and women seem to make similarly spectacular mistakes. Wise students of history recognize this, and learn from those errors as well (like the dubious domino theory in the case of the following). For this reason, I cite someone who was not perfect, or someone who I idolize, but just a decent man who did some things worthy of the admiration of people of all ideological persuasions.

Dwight D. Eisenhower.

Bear with me. Don't flame me yet. He is a Republican icon and not a particularly progressive figure in history, but he did several things that I admire, which are magnified by the fact he was juxtaposed on the opposite side of the aisle. I researched him expecting to find a cold reactionary and was very surprised. Nothing pleases me more than to be proven wrong in my negative judgment of a person's character.

On a personal level, he was a fine person, not as brutally brilliant as Patton or as dramatic as MacArthur, but far better loved by his troops, because he valued more than merely military victory.

As a general, he was one prominent military officer who discouraged the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, arguing that it was pointlessly punitive to do it to an already broken nation, and not worth the American ego-trip of an 'unconditional surrender'. I believe he was right.

He was a genuine internationalist who respected other countries and cultures, as evinced in his proclamations here and abroad.

First: No people on earth can be held, as a people, to be enemy, for all humanity shares the common hunger for peace and fellowship and justice.

Second: No nation's security and well-being can be lastingly achieved in isolation but only in effective cooperation with fellow-nations.

Third: Any nation's right to form of government and an economic system of its own choosing is inalienable.

Fourth: Any nation's attempt to dictate to other nations their form of government is indefensible.

And fifth: A nation's hope of lasting peace cannot be firmly based upon any race in armaments but rather upon just relations and honest understanding with all other nations.

He was one of the only presidents in the modern era with the guts to actually pursue cuts in the irrationally bloated military budget, all in the midst of Cold War arms-race paranoia. As he stated to the American Society of Newspaper Editors in 1953:

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.
This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.

He respected the separation of powers and state and local authorities, which is why he was such a passive president. Granted, this was unfortunate for the latent civil rights movement, for which his administration is justly criticized. However, he sincerely believed that at that particular time, merely changing the laws would not alter the mindset and social climate in the South, which was volatile and dangerous.

He didn't enter the office with an agenda and he didn't try to fight the legislature, which follows the Federalist ideal of the American president. Sometimes this made him justifiably appear weak, but his strategy often worked in his favor, too. He despised McCarthy from the beginning, but knew that it was infeasible to openly oppose him, so he 'gave him enough rope in hopes that he would hang himself', which McCarthy reliably did.

I love presidents with vast dreams and ambitious programs like the Great Society just as anyone here, but as the founder of the Great Society himself implied, executive power can be used to terrible purposes as well.

Finally, he appreciated the horror of war, and despite misgivings from both Democrats and Republicans, he drew a rapid armistice in Korea in a way that spared America's reputation and ceased the needless destruction of thousands of lives. It wasn't an end to our trouble with Korea, but it was the better of several unhappy outcomes. I only wish that his vice-president had followed his lead in the following decade with Vietnam - tens of thousands of Americans might still be alive.

My grandparents all voted for Stevenson, and I probably would have as well, but in the end we could have done far worse than Ike.

[enigmatic]

33. Bukowski

The man who made me want to become a writer, and kept me alive for many, many years w/ his books. I even got a letter from him back in 1990; i still have it hanging on my bathroom wall..