I AM WITH YOU. I LOVE YOU. LEAD ON.
Dart, Justin
June 22, 2002
Dearly Beloved:
Listen to the heart of this old soldier. As with all of us
the time comes when body and mind are battered and weary.
But I do not go quietly into the night. I do not give up
struggling to be a responsible contributor to the sacred
continuum of human life. I do not give up struggling to
overcome my weakness, to conform my life - and that part of
my life called death - to the great values of the human
dream.
Death is not a tragedy. It is not an evil from which we
must escape. Death is as natural as birth. Like
childbirth, death is often a time of fear and pain, but
also of profound beauty, of celebration of the mystery and
majesty which is life pushing its horizons toward oneness
with the truth of mother universe. The days of dying carry
a special responsibility. There is a great potential to
communicate values in a uniquely powerful way - the person
who dies demonstrating for civil rights.
Let my final actions thunder of love, solidarity, protest -
of empowerment.
I adamantly protest the richest culture in the history of
the world, a culture which has the obvious potential to
create a golden age of science and democracy dedicated to
maximizing the quality of life of every person, but which
still squanders the majority of its human and physical
capital on modern versions of primitive symbols of power
and prestige.
I adamantly protest the richest culture in the history of
the world which still incarcerates millions of humans with
and without disabilities in barbaric institutions,
backrooms and worse, windowless cells of oppressive
perceptions, for the lack of the most elementary
empowerment supports.
I call for solidarity among all who love justice, all who
love life, to create a revolution that will empower every
single human being to govern his or her life, to govern the
society and to be fully productive of life quality for self
and for all.
I do so love all the patriots of this and every nation who
have fought and sacrificed to bring us to the threshold of
this beautiful human dream. I do so love America the
beautiful and our wild, creative, beautiful people. I do
so love you, my beautiful colleagues in the disability and
civil rights movement.
My relationship with Yoshiko Dart includes, but also
transcends, love as the word is normally defined. She is
my wife, my partner, my mentor, my leader and my
inspiration to believe that the human dream can live. She
is the greatest human being I ever known.
Yoshiko, beloved colleagues, I am the luckiest man in the
world to have been associated with you. Thanks to you, I
die free. Thanks to you, I die in the joy of struggle.
Thanks to you, I die in the beautiful belief that the
revolution of empowerment will go on. I love you so much.
I'm with you always. Lead on! Lead on!
Justin Dart
JUSTICE FOR ALL -- A Service of the
American Association of People with Disabilities
http://www.aapd-dc.org
http://www.jfanow.org
> Japanese Translation