From the Editor's Desk

Eleanor Roosevelt in 1933 urged women to reject political parties' candidates "when the need arises…." She continued, "This will not be disloyalty but will show that as members of a party they are loyal first to the fine things for which the party stands and when it rejects those things or forgets the legitimate objects for which parties exist, then as a party it cannot command the honest loyalty of its members."

One crucial feature of oppressive forms of loyalty is the adoption or promulgation of the exclusive point of view of those in power. For example, the three police officers who fired 46 bullets at three unarmed Black men in New York, killing Sean Bell and wounding the others, were acquitted of all charges at trial, because Judge Arthur Cooperman clearly felt loyalty to the police, admitting in his judicial opinion, "... [I]n analyzing what happened here, it was necessary to consider the mind-set of each defendant at the time and place of occurrence, and not the mind-set of the victims." The judge literally adopted the officers' point of view, declared he didn't believe the testimony of the victims, and thus acquitted the officers.

Loyalty is invoked the world over by dictators and bullies trying to maintain their power. Robert Mugabe, in Zimbabwe, constantly invokes his anti-imperialist legacy, demanding loyalty to his dictatorial rule because, as he said on April 18, 2008, "Zimbabwe will never be a colony again. Never shall we retreat." Mugabe's party ordered the Zimbabwean Electoral Commission to refuse to release the results of the March election, and to "recount" ballots in an attempt to reverse the results. Increasingly, Zimbabweans are casting aside these despotic tactics, asserting a higher loyalty to democracy and human rights.

As Eleanor Roosevelt observed, loyalty can be a virtue, at least when it is turned inside out, when it becomes loyalty to a principle instead of a person, to an ideal rather than a government. In these pages, Zimbabwean civil society organizations and US-based human rights activists declare their dedication to helping to transform Zimbabwe in democratic directions.

The mercifully not-very-observed Loyalty Day in the US began as the assimilationist and anti-labor "Americanization Day" on May 1st, 1921. George Bush each year issues proclamations for Loyalty Day declaring it a day to celebrate the US armed forces. But in these pages, even as Gilda Carbonaro mourns her son, a US Marine killed in Iraq, she declares instead her loyalty to ending suffering and her commitment to helping others in the US understand our responsibility to end the war.

Tina Chéry, also mourning her murdered son, promotes loyalty to the principle of forgiveness as she brings together families who have lost loved ones to murder, with families whose loved ones are in prison for violent crimes. Greg Williams also calls on those of us who profess loyalty to nonviolence to become engaged in violence prevention here at home. Van Jones and Majora Carter are confronting environmental racism and creating green jobs by expanding the purview of nonviolence to include loyalty to the ecosystems in which we live.

The International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Campaign works to promote international solidarity for the cause of non-discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people around the world, and thus recently honored Bishop Tutu, Andrés Ignacio Rivera Duarte, and the Iranian Queer Organization, for their brave efforts.

Barbara Seaman, a feminist health pioneer, insisted that doctors' loyalty should be to women's health, not drug companies' profits. Mark Twain once wrote that, "Loyalty to petrified opinions never yet broke a chain or freed a human soul in this world - and never will." Barbara Seaman's example, and the authors' mentioned above, can help all of us break the chains.

Sam Diener, Co-Editor