Fire Burns Home & Office of World Citizen Elder Garry Davis

From: Arthur Kanegis <arthurkanegis@gmail.com>

Fire Burns Home & Office of World Citizen Elder Garry Davis

Tuesday, April 6, 2010, 9:20 PM

 

World Government House Burns 

 

An accidental fire destroyed the interior of Garry Davis’s Burlington , VT home, including his small video-studio in the basement and the offices of the World Government House.  At age 88 he has been undertaking a momentous effort, promoting world citizenship, writing his blogs and books and helping create a vision of a better way to run our world – all from his home.

 

While the World Service Authority office in Washington, DC, has staff and interns to issue World Passports, up in Vermont Garry has been working alone without an assistant to help with back-ups, etc.  Now most of his belongings have been destroyed.  His laptop was a melted lump.  Data recovery experts are trying to retrieve the 25 years of documents from his desktop computer. Fortunately Garry was not hurt, and insurance will cover the physical damage, but the task of replacing lost work and rebuilding his home is enormous and Garry needs us now more than ever.

 

As you may know, I’m producing a movie about Garry Davis and his pioneering life adventures, living for over 60 years as a citizen of no nation, only the world.  Rather than just talk about how we ought to have peace and one world, he’s been actually living it and doing it, here and now – taking such dramatic actions on the global stage that they’ve provided the grist for an award-winning screenplay and a documentary-in-process.  You can see our 5 minute short about Garry on our new website at www.onefilms.com.  

 

As Garry’s cinematic biographer, I was very concerned when I heard about the fire, but when I spoke to him by phone, I was floored by his undefeatable attitude toward life:

 

“How can I consider that anything material that is lost means anything?  You know, it doesn’t matter.  I was on the dusty roads of the world for 25 years.  The secret of success and well-being is to reduce your needs.  The more needs you have, the more things you have, the less freedom you have.  That’s my philosophy of life.  So it doesn’t matter when I lose a house.  You’ve got to be philosophical about the world itself, the worldly things.  The main thing is to think of the higher levels.  That’s where I live." 

 

Wow!  Garry loses everything, and instead of being in tears, he’s upbeat, vibrant and strong.  And he’s found something great rising out of the ashes:

 

“It’s amazing that I’ve been here for, I don’t know, 13 years, alone in that house and the minute the house burned down, suddenly I’m in contact - I will be in contact with an enormous number of people here in Burlington, including students through a guy who was at my door canvassing one day.  I gave him My Country is the World.  He took my book and read it.  Now he’s working for me.  To him this is the beginning of his life, to meet me and to know about World Citizenship.  He looked at your One Films site and at all the films.  He’s totally turned on and wants to bring it to his world, which means the students.  He says, ‘You’ve got to be in Facebook now.  Everybody’s reading it.’  He’s got a thousand ideas.  We had to buy a big white sheet of paper to put down all his ideas.  This is the first time I’ve got a young assistant who is gung-ho.    Not only that, but he plays classical piano.  He’s kind of a chess master.   He knows all about computers.  

 

What a godsend!  You ' ll want to find some money for this guy, because we’re having trouble paying him $10 an hour.”

 

Garry needs donations to have Andrew assist him not only to rebuild his work, but also to carry it forward to a whole higher level.

 

Your help is needed like never before!   Please join Garry now in making a difference for the world.  To contribute, simply go to his site www.worldgovernment.org and click on the donate button.  

 

Alternately, if you want your contribution to be tax-deductible, send it to our separate non-profit, Future WAVE (Working for Alternatives to Violence through Entertainment). WAVE will engage Andrew, Burlington film students and videographers to help Garry set up an even better film studio and to document his amazing journey. 

 

We’ll also arrange to scan and capture on film several notebooks of historic clippings, letters from heads of state and one-of-a-kind documents of his dramatic adventures, which amazingly were in a place in the house that was protected from the flames.   This material is crucial, since our documentary film is about to start pre-production with our new academy-award nominated director!    E-mail me if you’d like a copy of our new documentary proposal.

 

To make a tax-deductible donation via PayPal or credit card, simply click here: https://www.PayPal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_s-xclick&hosted_button_id=Z62KJCKTU9ESG

 

Please contact me if you need any further information.  Garry’s home number doesn’t work since the phone was burned and lines melted, but you can call his cell at +1 (802) 598-3211. You can also send checks to help Garry Davis directly at PO Box 9390, South Burlington, VT 05407.

 

Arthur Kanegis