My Name is Lisa Kalvelage

[struggle4progress]

... i must have been asked a 100 times where i was, what i did
in those years when hitler ruled our state

i said i was a child, or at most a teenager
but that only continued the questioning
they'd ask where were my parents, my father, my mother
and to this i could not answer a thing ...

perhaps i can tell it to my children 6
and later on, their own children
and at least in the future they need not be silent
when they're asked, where was your mother when

my name is lisa kalvelage
(i wonder, where was my mother then)

... The Cupertino mother of five daughters is best remembered in a song by legendary folk singer Pete Seeger that she inspired. "My Name is Lisa Kalvelage" evolved from her 1966 act of civil disobedience, when Kalvelage and three other housewives parked themselves in front of a forklift loading shipments of napalm bombs headed from Alviso to Vietnam. Donning Sunday dresses, gloves and heels, the quartet entered the storage yard by climbing a fence, an act that would lead them to the county jail, where they were strip-searched ...
Longtime South Bay peace activist Lisa Kalvelage dies at 85
By Karen de Sá
Mercury News
Posted: 03/12/2009 07:43:30 PM PDT
Updated: 03/14/2009 09:37:56 AM PDT