Letter to Barack Obama

This is the letter I've just mailed to our new president. As I've said before, I'm just one little voice, and each person reading this is just one little voice. But if each one of you would write your own letter, together we can make a big voice, maybe, even, big enough to be heard. Dear Mr. President, I didn't get to watch your inauguration because I was working, but my local newspaper published the text of your speech. What you said is quite impressive, but I couldn't fail to notice what you didn't say. You talked about a war, "against a far-reaching network of violence and hatred," but said nothing about the war here at home, the war being waged by our government against its own citizens. Every day in America, agents of our government use terrorist tactics against peaceful, unarmed civilians - men, women and children - in a never-ending "war on drugs", the legacy of Richard Nixon. The so-called "war on drugs," Mr. President, is a war on people. Drugs don't go to prison; people do. Drugs don't have families, homes or lives to lose; people do. You've offered to "extend a hand" to our enemies; won't you extend a hand to your own countrymen? You have the power to end Nixon's war and bring half a million of our sons and daughters, our brothers and sisters, our husbands and our wives home. You have the power to restore freedom to the once-proud "Land of the Free." Wouldn't that be a "change" worth fighting for?