On Sept. 17, Charles Carney reflected on his 253-mile walk from Wichita to Kansas City, Mo.—a walk to save the Earth and free us from nuclear weapons. To 25 persons at the Finale Rally for the Peace Walk, he insisted, “We will not go quietly into the deep dark destruction of nuclear madness!” These videos by Ann Suellentrop (links are below) share his talk.
- Charles pays tribute to his late brother-in-law, Bob Lavelle; Charles named his walk the Wichita-to-KC Bob Lavelle Memorial Peace Walk. Bob was the primary force in creating a pathway west of Wichita, “an anti-emission pathway,” says Charles, noting Bob’s “vision for a non-CO2 world.”
- “Get a life!”—some hollered at Charles as he walked. Here’s his answer.
[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FujaqyyDIbk[/embedyt]
- Charles says he is done with business-as-usual, lining our own pockets. His commitment? It’s “understanding the amazing—some would say mystical—interconnectedness we have with each other and with all life on the planet.” (The nearby traffic keeps us from hearing “on the planet.”)
- Pondering rampant capitalism and overwhelming poverty, Charles moves to call-and-response about short-term profits, greed, and love.
- Charles says he started his walk Aug. 10, noting, “253 miles; 445,280 steps; 38 days, all manners of trees, plants, bugs, a lone wolf, a baby doe, a bald eagle, and three wild turkeys later, here we stand.”
- He speaks of trespassing on his own comfort and perhaps trespassing on the comfort of others, and then gives a classic Dorothy Day comment (Day helped start the Catholic Worker movement, and Charles and his wife, Donna Constantineau, have turned their home in KCK into the St. Lawrence Catholic Worker House).
- Finally, in the last clip, Charles asks a question he hasn’t had the luxury of asking for many days.
Copyright 2021, Charles Carney, Ann Suellentrop, Jane Stoever, Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike 4.0 International License.
