Like many prophets, Garry Davis was egotistical, single-minded and … uniquely in touch with a higher truth. The Vermont-based founder of the World Government of World Citizens, who died in Williston last week at age 91, gets a full-scale, strongly sympathetic send-off in today’s New York Times.
“His rationale was simple, his aim immense: If there were no nation-states, he believed, there would be no wars,” the Times observes.
Davis, the longtime companion of local philanthropist and activist Robin Lloyd, launched his world government in 1953 from the steps of the Ellsworth, Maine, town hall. His organization has since issued some 2.5 million “world passports.”
Davis was a regular at public meetings in and around Burlington. He often took advantage of the Q&A portion to pitch his project. Seven Days profiled Davis in 2001. Last month, a new documentary about his life was released, entitled My Country Is the World, and the World Is My Stage: The True Story of Garry Davis.
“Whether Mr. Davis was a visionary utopian or a quixotic naïf was long debated by press and public,” the Times recounts. “His supporters argued that the documents he issued had genuine value for refugees and other stateless people. His detractors countered that by issuing them — and charging a fee — Mr. Davis was selling false hope to people who spent what little they had on papers that are legally recognized almost nowhere in the world.”
It’s clear, though, where the Times and writer Margalit Fox stand on Davis’ unparalled act of chutzpah in declaring himself head of a world government.
“What is beyond dispute is that Mr. Davis’s long insistence on the inalienable right of anyone to travel anywhere prefigures the present-day immigration debate by decades,” the obit opines. “It likewise anticipates the current stateless conditions of Julian Assange and Edward J. Snowden.”
Read the full New York Times story here.
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I met Garry while golfing a few years back. He was a genuinely compassionate, brave and intelligent human being. He will be greatly missed but never forgotten.
I agree with the comment from Erik Thomsen. And may I please add that I
don’t think that Garry Davis gave us any more false hope than the hope
we are given for a better world after death by some actual leaders in
our different cultures. I have never heard Garry (in the 30 years I
have known him) label himself neither prophet nor “head of the world
government”. I remember Garry specifically telling us the contrary:
that he was “only” but proudly a World Citizen, like millions of others,
and his single minded attitude was due to the overwhelming task of
“sharing” and encouraging each of us on the GLOBE to use our rights and
duties as Citizens of the World. Most sincere people I talk to about
Garry admitted “He is right, you know…but…” and by this “but” they
meant all the everyday, practical, political, economical limitations we
frame ourselves with. We need a person like Mr. Garry Davis. We are
going to miss him. Read his books. My preferred was : Dear World, A
Global Odyssey. In this book, you see that Garry Davis was not a
dreamer, he put his ideas and words into action, involving his own
person and hurting no one else. Should not we at least learn this from
him? I miss you Mr. Garry Davis.