To the editor:
What does the "occupy movement" mean to a community in "distress" ... deciding its future survival as a seaport community?
The people who live here now "occupy" a section of land we call Cape Ann and we form a community we call Gloucester.
Back to the future, the people who "occupied" this same land before the colonizing nations of Europe arrived lived a life we can not even imagine. The abundant sea life and beauty startled the first Explorers and one of them called it "Le Beauport."
The Europeans told the people who were here and who were first to "occupy" this land, saying "We have discovered you." "Discovery" to the European colonizers, meant "ownership," and this land was now "owned."
Evidently we who occupy this land have been discovered by an European descendant who calls himself Jim Davis.
The native people who were eradicated gave us this warning:
"Only when the last tree has died and the last river has been poisoned and the last fish has been caught will the white man realize he cannot eat money."
I greatly appreciate their warning ... our understanding of what happened to them and the meaning of their warning has come too late.
REV. RICHARD EMMANUEL
East Main Street, Gloucester
