President's Daughter - Activist

  "In February of 1987, Amy Carter walked into a courthouse in Massachusetts not as a former first daughter seeking sympathy, but as a college student and activist facing criminal charges for protesting CIA recruitment at the University of Massachusetts, and what happened next proved she'd been learning far more in the White House than anyone realized. She and fourteen other activists were arrested for trespassing during a sit-in against CIA involvement in Central America, and instead of hiding behind her famous name or pleading for special treatment, Amy helped mount a necessity defense that turned the trial into a referendum on American foreign policy itself. Her legal team called expert witnesses including former CIA agents and diplomats who testified about covert operations in Nicaragua, essentially putting the government on trial while Amy sat calmly in the defendant's chair, no longer the kid with the treehouse but a young woman wielding her platform for something bigger than herself. The jury acquitted her and her co-defendants, validating their argument that civil disobedience was necessary to prevent greater harm, and suddenly everyone who'd dismissed her as the awkward presidential daughter had to reckon with the fact that she'd been paying attention all along. She wasn't performing activism for cameras or clinging to faded relevance; she was risking her freedom for beliefs formed during a childhood spent watching power operate from the inside, understanding its costs in ways most activists only theorize about. Amy could have coasted on her father's legacy, accepted speaking fees and board positions, lived comfortably on her historical footnote, but instead she chose arrests and protests and the hard work of living according to conscience rather than convenience.

Amy Carter

Wikipedia gives this:

Amy Carter...became known for her political activism. She participated in sit-ins and protests during the 1980s and early 1990s that were aimed at changing U.S. foreign policy towards South African apartheid and Central America. Along with activist Abbie Hoffman and 13 others, she was arrested, while still a Brown student, during a 1986 demonstration at the University of Massachusetts Amherst for protesting CIA recruitment there. She was acquitted of all charges in a well-publicized trial in Northampton, Massachusetts. Attorney Leonard Weinglass, who [had] defended Hoffman in the Chicago Seven trial in the 1960s, utilized the necessity defense, successfully arguing that because the CIA was involved in criminal activity in Central America and other hotspots, preventing it from recruiting on campus was equivalent to trespassing in a burning building.

She is a member of the board of counselors of the Carter Center, established by her father, which advocates for human rights and diplomacy.

President Jimmy Carter

President Jimmy Carter

Rest in peace, President Carter. (1924-December 29, 2024) 

President Jimmy Carter wrote the following on June 16, 1977 and placed it in Voyager 1, which is the most distant human-made object from Earth:

"This Voyager spacecraft was constructed by the United States of America. We are a community of 240 million human being among the more than 4 billion who inhabit the planet Earth. We human beings are still divided into nation states, but these states are rapidly becoming a single global civilization.

We cast this message into the cosmos. It is likely to survive a billion years into our future, when our civilization is profoundly altered and the surface of the Earth may be vastly changed. Of the 200 billion stars in the Milky Way galaxy, some – perhaps many – may have inhabited planet and spacefaring civilizations. If one such civilization intercepts Voyager and can understand these recorded contents, here is our message:

“This is a present from a small distant world, a token of our sounds, our science, our images, our music, our thoughts and our feelings. We are attempting to survive our time so we may live into yours. We hope someday, having solved the problem we face, to join a community of galactic civilizations. This record represents our hope and our determination, and our good will in a vast and awesome universe.”

--- Jimmy Carter, President of the United States of America, the White House, June 16, 1977"

Thanks Robert Reich

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